"Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of deer? Can you number the months that they fulfill, and do you know the time they give birth, when they crouch to give birth to their offspring, and are delivered of their young? Their young ones become strong, they grow up in the open; they go forth, and do not return to them." (Job 39:1-4)
This passage comes in the middle of God's long response to Job and his friends. In this response (which continues through the remainder of Chapter 39), God reminds Job that it is God who created each living thing, that it is God who watches over the earth and all that God made. But what's beautiful about this proclamation is the intimacy of God's knowledge. This isn't the voice of a distant overseer. Rather, the voice of the One who made each living thing. God speaks of the smallest details of these creatures' lives -- when they give birth, what they eat, where they sleep, their flying patterns. It is a reminder to Job that God is a God of details, of the smallest moments, that God pays attention to the first steps of a deer and to the nest of the eagle. The animals are not held up as superior to humans (Job 39:9-12 is all about the ox as an animal meant for work). Instead, they are examples of the fullness of God's care for all of creation -- human being and animal alike… [God is] not a removed Creator but one who is in and around every detail of creation.
-- from The Green Bible Devotional
#2890
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