Who sets the wild ass free?

Job 39:4

Does nature operate with justice? Does the sun’s clockwork include compassion in any way at all? Job’s demand from God for clarity on his fate and the possible purpose of suffering hits a wall in this second speech that the Creator delivers in response. Justice? In the delicate ecosystem that’s called nature - the human claim on morality are not the priority or the operation code.

French author Anatole France famously wrote:

"It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil."

That seems to be the message God is delivering to Job by the time we get to today’s chapter. If Job thinks he can put God on trial, then let him first explain the mysteries of nature and what big a job that is:

"Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Have you watched the calving of the deer?" (Job 39:1)

God opens this chapter not with fire and brimstone, but with an image of delicate, hidden processes—the birth of baby mountain goats, a reality Job may have never seen, let alone controlled. The point is sharp: justice, suffering, and the grand order of things exist far beyond human perception. Job’s concerns are real, but his understanding is painfully narrow.

God continues to list the creatures that he controls, from the ostrich and eagle to the ox and wild ass:

מִי־שִׁלַּח פֶּרֶא חׇפְשִׁי וּמֹסְרוֹת עָרוֹד מִי פִתֵּחַ׃

Who sets the wild ass free?

Who loosens the bonds of the young donkey?

Job 39:4

Here, God is no longer talking about delicate mountain births but about raw, untamed freedom. The wild donkey is unbound, answering to no master, roaming the desert with no obligation to serve. It lives outside human civilization and, therefore, beyond human structures of justice. It is neither rewarded nor punished—it simply is.

What is God saying to Job and to us?

The God who emerges from whirlwinds is dismantling the idea that justice, as Job understands it, is the foundation of the universe. Job, like all of us, wants a world where fairness reigns, where the good are rewarded and the wicked punished, where suffering has a clear explanation. But God points to the wild—to creatures that live and die by forces entirely outside human notions of right and wrong.

Nature, in its vast and indifferent beauty, operates on a scale beyond us.

This is what Anatole France was getting at. We like to imagine that justice is woven into the very fabric of existence, that the moral laws we create govern more than just our cities and courts - if that. But nature doesn’t play by our rules, and neither, then, does God.

The lion doesn’t apologize to the gazelle. The earthquake doesn’t take a poll before it strikes. The wild ass doesn’t ask permission to be free.

What this means for our human hubris - is humility. It’s a stern response to our belief that the universe must conform to our understanding of fairness. Job has spent the entire book demanding answers, believing that suffering should make sense. But in this zoological chapter, God isn’t giving answers but giving perspective.

Justice exists, but it is not the law of the wild.

The challenge of Job, and even more so for us with all our advanced technologies, is the challenge of humility: to accept that while we crave order and justice, we live in a world with wild asses that like to roam free -- a far wilder world than we dare to admit.

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