Job 39:19-30

Hast thou given the horse strength?

The higher teaching of Nature

The intent of all these beautiful references to the works of Nature is to teach us, from the wisdom, skill, and curious designs discoverable in the formation and the instincts of various birds and beasts, to impress ourselves with a worthy notion of the “riches of the wisdom” of Him that made and sustaineth all things. These impressions we are to carry with us when we consider the dealings of God in the way of Providence, and in His ordering of all events, as the great Governor of the universe. Can we suppose that there is anything wrong here, or without the design of the most consummate wisdom, when He has put forth so much of His skill and contrivance in the formation and ordering of these inferior animals? May He not be trusted to do all things well, concerning the destiny of man, the greatest of His works? In this higher economy, are we to suppose there is less wisdom and design to be manifested, than in this, which displays itself so visibly in these inferior works of His hand? Thus would our blessed Lord increase the confidence of His disciples in His providential care of them, by observing, “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and not one of them falleth to the ground without your Father?” “Fear not,” “are ye not much better than they?--of more value than many sparrows.” It was the want of such due impressions concerning the designing wisdom of God, ever present, and ever operating in all things, that had led Job to think and speak unworthily of that dispensation of Providence under which he now lived, as being altogether arbitrary, discovering no design and discriminating wisdom, nor manifesting the righteous Governor of all things. His despairing mind seemed to think that the Lord had forsaken the earth; and such confusion and misrule permitted that the wisdom and justice and goodness of God could only be manifested in what was hereafter to take place in a future state. Therefore had Job despaired of life, and longed for death. And we remember what it was that led Job into this unhappy state of mind. On account of his moral and religious attainments, he had been so lifted up with pride, that when it pleased God, in His secret wisdom, to suffer him to be afflicted, he dared to say he did not deserve it: and in order to reconcile the possibility of that, with the notions that he held in common with his friends, respecting the Providence of God,--as certainly willing and accomplishing all things which come to pass,--he was led to express those unworthy notions of the present dispensation of things which we have seen exposed, first by His messenger Elihu, and now by Jehovah Himself. (John Fry, B. A.)

The horse

As the Bible makes a favourite of the horse, the patriarch, and the prophet, and the evangelist, and the apostle, stroking his sleek hide, and patting his rounded neck, and tenderly lifting his exquisitely-formed hoof, and listening with a thrill to the champ of his bit, so all great natures in all ages have spoken of him in encomiastic terms. Virgil in his Georgics almost seems to plagiarise from this description in the text, so much are the descriptions alike--the description of Virgil and the description of Job. The Duke of Wellington would not allow anyone irreverently to touch his old war horse Copenhagen, on whom he had ridden fifteen hours without dismounting at Waterloo; and when old Copenhagen died, his master ordered a military salute to be fired over his grave. John Howard showed that he did not exhaust his sympathies in pitying the human race, for when ill he writes home, “Has my old chaise horse become sick or spoiled?” There is hardly any passage of French literature more pathetic than the lamentation over the death of the war charger Marchegay. Walter Scott had so much admiration for this Divinely honoured creature of God, that, in St. Ronan’s Well, he orders the girth to be slackened and the blanket thrown over the smoking flanks. Edmund Burke, walking in the park at Beaconsfield, musing over the past, throws his arms around the worn-out horse of his dead son Richard, and weeps upon the horse’s neck, the horse seeming to sympathise in the memories. Rowland Hill, the great English preacher, was caricatured because in his family prayer he supplicated for the recovery of a sick horse; but when the horse got well, contrary to all the prophecies of the farriers, the prayer did not seem quite so much of an absurdity. (T. De Witt Talmage.)

Horses in battle

In time of war the cavalry service does the most execution; and as the battles of the world are probably not all past, Christian patriotism demands that we be interested in equinal velocity. We might as well have poorer guns in our arsenals and clumsier ships in our navy than other nations, as to have under our cavalry saddles and before our parks of artillery slower horses. From the battle of Granicus, where the Persian horses drove the Macedonian infantry into the river, clear down to the horses on which Philip Sheridan and Stonewall Jackson rode into the fray, this arm of the military service has been recognised. Hamilcar, Hannibal, Gustavus Adolphus, Marshal Ney were cavalrymen. In this arm of the service Charles Martel at the battle of Poictiers beat back the Arab invasion. The Carthaginian cavalry, with the loss of only seven hundred men, overthrew the Roman army with the loss of seven thousand. In the same way the Spanish chivalry drove back the Moorish hordes. Our Christian patriotism and our instruction from the Word of God demand that first of all we kindly treat the horse, and then, after that, that we develop his fleetness, and his grandeur, and his majesty, and his strength. (T. De Witt Talmage.)