Verse Lens · Concise explanation
Job 39:18 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 18. 18What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
Job 39:18 closes the thought unit with the words “What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider.” The LORD states “What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider” as one poetic claim in The Ostrich Embodies Strange, Effective Creaturely Life.
Read It With
- Job 39:13–39:18
Read Job 39:18 with 39:13–39:18. Read alone, “What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider” could lose its speaker, the question or claim it develops, and the unit's outcome. The complete movement establishes: The speech describes disputed bird imagery, exposed eggs, apparent lack of wisdom, and startling speed that mocks the horse.
Why This Verse Appears Here
The LORD continues from Job 39:1–39:12: The LORD asks about mountain-goat births and depicts wild donkeys and wild oxen living free from human management and labor. Job 39:13–39:18 now develops the next distinct movement: The speech describes disputed bird imagery, exposed eggs, apparent lack of wisdom, and startling speed that mocks the horse. Within that relationship, Job 39:18 closes the thought unit through “What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider.”
Read Job 39:13–18 together
Why these verses belong together: Job 39:13–39:18 follows the pinned KJV paragraphing and holds together one sustained divine-speech movement: “The Ostrich Embodies Strange, Effective Creaturely Life.” The next unit begins with a new stanza, question sequence, scene, speaker response, or rhetorical turn.
Verse 13. 13 Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks? or wings and feathers unto the ostrich?
Verse 14. 14 Which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in dust,
Verse 15. 15 And forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break them.
Verse 16. 16 She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not hers: her labour is in vain without fear;
Verse 17. 17 Because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding.
Verse 18. 18 What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider.
What Remains True
The speech describes disputed bird imagery, exposed eggs, apparent lack of wisdom, and startling speed that mocks the horse. A speaker's pain or a difficult ancient image can be heard honestly without turning marginalized people, women, parents, or people with cognitive differences into contemptuous types. Job 39:18 carries that bounded truth through “What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider.”
How It Can Shape Life
- When teaching Job 39:13–39:18, name the speaker and rhetorical image, preserve the pain or textual difficulty, and explicitly refuse class stigma, misogyny, parental shaming, ableism, or dehumanization. Preserve this unit-specific boundary in the action: The Hebrew is difficult, and the creature portrait should not be turned into a moral judgment on parents, women, or people with cognitive differences. The verse-specific evidence to retain is “What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider.”
Continue in Context
The full thought-unit study remains the final contextual authority for this Verse Lens.
Read Job 39:13–39:18 — The Ostrich Embodies Strange, Effective Creaturely LifeSources used for this Verse Lens
How certain is this explanation? probable
These are the sources used directly for this lens. Language, grammar, disagreements, and the complete source shelf remain attached to the full thought-unit research record.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact displayed KJV wording, verse order, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete thought-unit coverage.
Exact location: Job 39:13–39:18, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM-derived repository corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: Job
Open Scriptures
Open Scriptures, release 2.2
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording and morphology checked at the exact unit without treating morphology as a complete apparatus or interpretation.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Job.xml, OSIS 39:13–39:18
Open the fixed Hebrew Job file ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible First Edition Notes: Job
Biblical Studies Press
Biblical Studies Press, 2006; current official PDF
Supports: Verse-level controls for Job's difficult Hebrew, syntax, older KJV language, textual issues, speech boundaries, and alternatives in Job 39:13–39:18.
Exact location: Official NET Job PDF, exact translator, study, and textual notes attached to Job 39:13–39:18
Open the official NET Job PDF ↗