Ayub 38:41--39:4

38:41 Who prepares prey for the raven,

when its young cry out to God

and wander about ¹  for lack of food?

39:1 “Are you acquainted with the way ² 

the mountain goats ³  give birth?

Do you watch as the wild deer give birth to their young?

39:2 Do you count the months they must fulfill,

and do you know the time they give birth? ⁴ 

39:3 They crouch, they bear ⁵  their young,

they bring forth the offspring they have carried. ⁶ 

39:4 Their young grow strong, and grow up in the open; ⁷ 

they go off, and do not return to them.

[38:41]  ¹ tn The verse is difficult, making some suspect that a line has dropped out. The little birds in the nest hardly go wandering about looking for food. Dhorme suggest “and stagger for lack of food.”

[39:1]  ² tn The text uses the infinitive as the object: “do you know the giving birth of?”

[39:1]  ³ tn Or “ibex.”

[39:2]  ⁴ tn Here the infinitive is again a substantive: “the time of their giving birth.”

[39:3]  ⁵ tc The Hebrew verb used here means “to cleave,” and this would not have the object “their young.” Olshausen and others after him change the ח (khet) to ט (tet) and get a verb “to drop,” meaning “drop [= give birth to] young” as used in Job 21:10. G. R. Driver holds out for the MT, arguing it is an idiom, “to breach the womb” (“Problems in the Hebrew text of Job,” VTSup 3 [1955]: 92-93).

[39:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “they cast forth their labor pains.” This word usually means “birth pangs” but here can mean what caused the pains (metonymy of effect). This fits better with the parallelism, and the verb (“cast forth”). The words “their offspring” are supplied in the translation for clarity; direct objects were often omitted when clear from the context, although English expects them to be included.

[39:4]  ⁷ tn The idea is that of the open countryside. The Aramaism is found only here.