Job 39:5-8 5 Who hath sent forth the wild ass free,
And who loosed the bands of the wild ass, 6 Whose house I made the steppe,
And his dwelling the salt country? 7 He scorneth the tumult of the city,
He heareth not the noise of the driver. 8 That which is seen upon the mountains is his pasture,
And he sniffeth after every green thing.
On the wild ass (not: ass of the forest).
In Hebr. and Arab. it is פּרא (ferâ or himâr el - wahsh , i.e., asinus ferus), and Aram. ערוד; the former describes it as a swift-footed animal, the latter as an animal shy and difficult to be tamed by the hand of man; “Kulan” is its Eastern Asiatic name. lxx correctly translates: τίς δὲ ἐστιν ὁ ἀφεὶς ὄνον ἄγριον ἐλεύθερον. חפשׁי is the acc. of the predicate (comp. Gen 33:2; Jer 22:30). Parallel with ערבה (according to its etymon perhaps, land of darkness, terra incognita) is מלחה, salt adj. or (sc. ארץ) a salt land, i.e., therefore unfruitful and incapable of culture, as the country round the Salt Sea of Palestine: that the wild ass even gladly licks the salt or natron of the desert, is a matter of fact, and may be assumed, since all wild animals that feed on plants have a partiality, which is based on chemical laws of life, for licking slat. On Job 39:8 Ew. observes, to render יתוּר as “what is espied” is insecure, “on account of the structure of the verse” (Gramm. S. 419, Anm.). This reason is unintelligible; and in general there is no reason for rendering יתוּר, after lxx, Targ., Jer., and others, as an Aramaic 3 fut. with a mere half vowel instead of Kametz before the tone = יתוּר, which is without example in Old Testament Hebrew (for יהוּא, Ecc 11:3, follows the analogy of יהי), but יתוּר signifies either abundantia (after the form יבוּל, לחוּם Job 20:23, from יתר, Arab. wtr, p. 571) or investigabile, what can be searched out (after the form יקוּם, that which exists, from תּוּר, Arab. târ, to go about, look about), which, with Olsh. §212, and most expositors, we prefer.