Job 39:2
in Job 39Can you count the months they are pregnant? Do you know the time they give birth?
BSB
The same verse in ASV and KJV ▾
ASV
Canst thou number the months that they fulfil? Or knowest thou the time when they bring forth?
KJV
Canst thou number the months that they fulfil? or knowest thou the time when they bring forth?
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This verse in Job 39
Commentary
8 notes on this verseShall we pretend to tell what is in the womb of Providence, or what a day will bring forth, who know not the time of the pregnancy of a hind or a wild goat?
This site's exposition
mountain goats give birth
on Job 39:1-4
The list of creatures opens with births no man attends: the “mountain goats” and the doe keep their own times. Their young “leave and do not return”. Delitzsch notes the argument beneath every portrait, that God sustains whole orders of life that owe man nothing and lie outside his management.
This site's exposition
count the months they are pregnant
Barnes explains why Job could never count these months. The mountain goats live on crags out of reach, so their habits stay hidden from men who know every season of their tame flocks. Gill notes that some take the question of both the goats and the deer.
The record, by era
The Church Fathers1 voice
He is right in saying, "Have you protected the calving of the hinds?" Since flight, fear and anxiety are usual in this kind of animal, which never ceases from leaping and galloping, how, he says, can it not abort, so do you know how its young can be given birth at the right time? "Say if you have numbered the full months of their being with young, and if you have relieved their pangs. [Speak out if you] have reared their young without fear. Will you loosen their pangs?" This animal is timorous. How may its young ones, which cannot count on the speed of their legs, be devoid of fear? Who watches them? You see that nature never abandons them, neither the lion rules through its strength, nor is the hind abandoned.
The Medieval Church2 voices
The first of these is to know the space of time in which the fetus is brought to term in the womb, and expressing this he says, "Have you numbered the months of their conception?", i.e., can you indicate to them when they must prepare …
Hast thou numbered the months of their conception? 44. For when holy men think of the improvement of their hearers, they bear already a conception, as it were, in their womb. But when they put off some things which ought to be said, and seek a season fit for their exhortations, they are detained, as it were, by a weary length of months, from that birth which they wish to take place.
The Puritans and the Awakening1 voice
Canst thou number the months that they fulfil?.... Which some understand both of wild goats and hinds.
The Nineteenth Century1 voice
A commentator
Albert Barnes1798–1870
Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)
proposed
Canst thou number the months ... - That is, as they wander in the wilderness, as they live in inaccessible crags and cliffs of the rocks, it is impossible for man to be acquainted with their habits as he can with those of the domestic animals.
How the passage was read
What the Jewish commentators add
On the verses either side of this one
mountain goats Estainboc in Old French. It hates its young, and, when preparing to give birth, goes to the top of a high rock, so that its young should fall to the earth and die.
This section is reception history: how the passage was read and kept in the Jewish tradition. Where a reading parts from an essential of the Christian faith, the section says so at that point.
Texts and citation data: Sefaria; each excerpt follows its version’s licence. 3 further sources are cited on this chapter that carry no English text this site may quote or only restate the verse.
The words behind it
6 Hebrew wordsEvery Hebrew word of this verse in the order it stands, with what it means and the door to its own study. The last column counts the times a word stands in the whole Bible: the rarer the word, the more the places it appears belong together.
| Hebrew | Sound | Meaning | Word study | In the Bible |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| תִּסְפֹּ֣ר | tispor | will you count? | H5608 → | 159 times |
| יְרָחִ֣ים | yerachim | [the] months | H3391 → | 12 times |
| תְּמַלֶּ֑אנָה | temalenah | [which] they complete | H4390 → | 249 times |
| וְ֝יָדַ֗עְתָּ | veyada'ta | and do you know? | H3045 → | 945 times |
| עֵ֣ת | ʾet | [the] time of | H6256 → | 296 times |
| לִדְתָּֽנָה׃ | lidtanah | bringing forth they | H3205 → | 496 times |
תִּסְפֹּ֣רwill you count?
tisporH5608 →159 times
יְרָחִ֣ים[the] months
yerachimH3391 →12 times
תְּמַלֶּ֑אנָה[which] they complete
temalenahH4390 →249 times
וְ֝יָדַ֗עְתָּand do you know?
veyada'taH3045 →945 times
עֵ֣ת[the] time of
ʾetH6256 →296 times
לִדְתָּֽנָה׃bringing forth they
lidtanahH3205 →496 times
A shaded row is a word that stands 400 times or fewer in the Bible.
The walk
5 stopsEach card is a verse this one points to, and under it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it.
Through
Jeremiah 2:24a wild donkey at home in the wilderness, sniffing the wind in the heat of her desire. Who can restrain her passion? All who seek her need not weary themselves; in mating season they…
it leads to
- Jeremiah 14:6
Wild donkeys stand on barren heights; they pant for air like jackals; their eyes fail for lack of pasture.”
- Jeremiah 2:27
say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ For they have turned their backs to Me and not their faces, yet in the time of trouble…
- Hosea 5:15
Then I will return to My place until they admit their guilt and seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.”
- Job 39:5–8
Who set the wild donkey free? Who released the swift donkey from the harness?
- Job 11:12
But a witless man can no more become wise than the colt of a wild donkey can be born a man!
- Jeremiah 14:6
About Job
This page draws on Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869); Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Book of Job; Gregory the Dialogist, Morals on the Book of Job, Book XXX; John Chrysostom, COMMENTARY ON JOB 39:1B-3B; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763); Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible and Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Job.