¹"Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of the does?

²Can you number the months that they fulfill, and do you know the time when they give birth,

³when they crouch, bring forth their offspring, and are delivered of their young?

⁴Their young ones become strong; they grow up in the open; they go out and do not return to them.

⁵"Who has let the wild donkey go free? Who has loosed the bonds of the swift donkey,

⁶to whom I have given the arid plain for his home and the salt land for his dwelling place?

⁷He scorns the tumult of the city; he hears not the shouts of the driver.

⁸He ranges the mountains as his pasture, and he searches after every green thing.

⁹"Is the wild ox willing to serve you? Will he spend the night at your manger?

¹⁰Can you bind him in the furrow with ropes, or will he harrow the valleys after you?

¹¹Will you depend on him because his strength is great, and will you leave to him your labor?

¹²Do you have faith in him that he will return your grain and gather it to your threshing floor?

¹³"The wings of the ostrich wave proudly, but are they the pinions and plumage of love?

¹⁴For she leaves her eggs to the earth and lets them be warmed on the ground,

¹⁵forgetting that a foot may crush them and that the wild beast may trample them.

¹⁶She deals cruelly with her young, as if they were not hers; though her labor be in vain, yet she has no fear,

¹⁷because God has made her forget wisdom and given her no share in understanding.

¹⁸When she rouses herself to flee, she laughs at the horse and his rider.

¹⁹"Do you give the horse his might? Do you clothe his neck with a mane?

²⁰Do you make him leap like the locust? His majestic snorting is terrifying.

²¹He paws in the valley and exults in his strength; he goes out to meet the weapons.

²²He laughs at fear and is not dismayed; he does not turn back from the sword.

²³Upon him rattle the quiver, the flashing spear and the javelin.

²⁴With fierceness and rage he swallows the ground; he cannot stand still at the sound of the trumpet.

²⁵When the trumpet sounds, he says 'Aha!' He smells the battle from afar, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.

²⁶"Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars and spreads his wings toward the south?

²⁷Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes his nest on high?

²⁸On the rock he dwells and makes his home, on the rocky crag and stronghold.

²⁹From there he spies out the prey; his eyes behold it afar off.

³⁰His young ones suck up blood, and where the slain are, there is he."