a deity or the Deity · noun, common masculine singular absolute
deprived
הִשָּׁ֣הּhi.Shah
H5382
to forget · verb, hiphil perfect, 3rd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix, 3rd person feminine singular
wisdom
חָכְמָ֑הchokh.mah
H2451
wisdom (in a good sense) · noun, common feminine singular absolute
imparted
חָ֥לַקCha.lak
H2505
to be smooth (figuratively) · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
understanding
בַּבִּינָֽהba.bi.Nah
H998
understanding · preposition with the article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Job 35:11 Who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven?
Deuteronomy 2:30 But Sihon king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him: for the LORD thy God hardened his spirit, and made his heart obstinate, that he migh…
2 Chronicles 32:31 Howbeit in the business of the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, who sent unto him to enquire of the wonder that was done in the land,…
Job 17:4 For thou hast hid their heart from understanding: therefore shalt thou not exalt them.
Isaiah 19:11-14 Surely the princes of Zoan are fools, the counsel of the wise counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish: how say ye unto Pharaoh, I am the so…
Isaiah 57:17 For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him: I hid me, and was wroth, and he went on frowardly in the way of his heart.
James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shado…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Job 39:13-18
The ostrich is a wonderful animal, a very large bird, but it never flies. Some have called it a winged camel. God here gives an account of it, and observes,
I. Something that it has in common with the peacock, that is, beautiful feathers (Job 39:13): Gavest thou proud wings unto the peacocks? so some read it. Fine feathers make proud birds. The peacock is an emblem of pride; when he struts, and shows his fine feathers, Solomon in all his glory is not arrayed like him. The ostrich too has goodly feathers, and yet is a foolish bird; for wisdom does not always go along with beauty and gaiety. Other birds do not envy the peacock or the ostrich their gaudy colours, nor complain for want of them;…
wisdom--such as God gives to other animals, and to man (Job 35:11). The Arab proverb is, "foolish as an ostrich." Yet her very seeming want of wisdom is not without wise design of God, though man cannot see it; just as in the trials of the godly, which seem so unreasonable to Job, there lies hid a wise design.
Adam Clarke on Job 39:17
God hath deprived her of wisdom - Of this foolishness we have an account from the ancients; and here follow two instances:
1. It covers its head in the reeds, and thinks itself all out of sight because itself cannot see. So Claudian: -
- 'Stat lumine clauso
Ridendum revoluta caput: creditque latere
Quad non ipsa videt.'
2. They who hunt them draw the skin of an ostrich's neck on one hand, which proves a sufficient lure to take them with the other. They have so little brain that Heliogabalus had six hundred heads for his supper. Here we may observe, that our judicious as well as sublime author just touches the great points of distinction in each creature, and then hastens to another. A descr…
Because God hath deprived her of wisdom,.... Or "made her to forget" (d) what she had; an instance of her forgetfulness is mentioned Job 39:15; and so Leo Africanus (e) says of it, that it is of a very short memory, and presently forgets the place where its eggs are laid;
neither hath he imparted to her understanding; many instances are given of its stupidity by historians, as that it will take anything that is offered to it to eat, stones, iron, &c. (f); that it will thrust its head and neck into a thicket, fancying: it is hid and covered, and that none can see it; which Pliny (g) remarks as an instance of its foolishness; though Diodorus Siculus (h) takes this to be a point of prudence, f…
The Church Fathers
God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath He given her understanding. [MYSTICAL INTERPRETATION] 41. For strict is the enquiry of secret retribution; and because it knowingly lost its humility, it also lost, unwittingly, the understanding of the truth. But the wounds, which it inflicted on the faithful at the coming of the Redeemer, are much less than those with which it still aims to smite the Church, by the coming of Antichrist. For it is preparing itself for that time, in order to oppress the life of the faithful with accumulated strength.
"Because God denied him wisdom" and did not give him intelligence. What could be more foolish than to put your trust in vanity and work to acquire perishable goods, without fear of losing them? Such, however, is the vice of many men accustomed to favors of fortune, especially if this prosperity goes back several generations: it seems to them impossible to arrive suddenly at misery. They occupy a distinguished rank in the world; but as they can not go on the wings of their virtues to converse in the sky, one can not even compare them to an ostrich; but note the following
God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath He given her understanding. 26. Although to deprive is one thing, and not to give is another, yet His first expression 'deprived,' He repealed by subjoining, 'hath not given.' As if He were saying, My expression 'deprived' means not that He has unjustly taken away wisdom, but that He has justly not given it. Whence the Lord is described as having hardened the heart of Pharaoh, not because He Himself inflicted hardness, but because, according as his deserts demanded, He softened it not by any sensibility of heaven-infused fear. But now, because the hypocrite pretends that he is holy, and conceals himself under the semblance of good works, he is kept down by the peace of Holy Church, and is therefore, before our eyes, arrayed with the appearance of religion. But if any temptation of his faith springs up, the rabid mind of the wolf strips itself of its garb of sheep's skin; and shews by persecution, how greatly it rages against the holy.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Ostrich — (Lam. 4:3), the rendering of Hebrew pl. enim; so called from its greediness and gluttony. The allusion here is to the habit of the ostrich with reference to its eggs, which is thus described: “The…
Birds · Habits of — Habits of
Ostrich, The · Described as: Void of wisdom — Described as: Void of wisdom
Ostriches · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
13 The wing of the ostrich vibrates joyously,
Is she pious, wing and feather?
14 No, she leaveth her eggs in the earth
And broodeth over the dust,
15 Forgetting that a foot may crush them,
And the beast of the field trample them.
16 She treateth her young ones harshly as if they were not hers;
In vain is her labour, without her being distressed.
17 For Eloah hath caused her to forget wisdom,
And gave her no share of understanding.
18 At the time when she lasheth herself aloft,
She derideth the horse and horseman.
As the wild ass and the ox-like oryx cannot be tamed by man, and employed in his service like the domestic ass and ox, so the ostrich, although resembling the stork in its stilt-lik…
The ostrich is a symbol of neglect for her young (Lam 4:3) because she (1) lays her eggs on top of the earth; (2) appears to leave her eggs to die when a predator approaches them (although she is probably attempting to lure the predator away from the nest); and (3) lays her eggs with several other hens in one nest, so most of the eggs are not her own.
Rashi on Job 39:16
She is hardened She deals harshly with her young ones, [distancing them] from her heart as though they were not hers.
her toil is in vain and she is not afraid to lose them.
