A reading from the book of Job.

Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?

Do you observe the calving of the doves?

Can you number the months that they fulfill?

And do you know the time when they give birth?

When they crouch, bring forth their offspring, and are delivered of their young.

Their young ones become strong.

They grow up in the open.

They go out and do not return to them,

who has let the wild donkey go free, who has loose the bonds of the swift donkey, to whom I have

given the arid plain for his home, and the saltland for his dwelling place. He scorns the tumult

of the city, he hears not the shouts of the driver, he ranges the mountains as his pasture, and he searches after every green thing. Is the wild ox willing to serve you? Will he spend the night at your manger? Can you bind him in the furrow with ropes? Or will he harrow the valleys after you? Will you depend on him because his strength is great, and will you leave to him your labor?

Do you have faith in him that he will return your grain and gather it to your threshing floor?

The wings of the ostrich wave proudly, but are they the pinions in plumage of love?

For she leaves her eggs to the earth and lets them be warmed on the ground, forgetting that a foot may crush them,

and that the wild beast may trample them. She deals cruelly with her young as if they were not hers,

though her labor be in vain, yet she has no fear, because God has made her forget wisdom

and given her no share in understanding. When she rouses herself to flee, she laughs at the horse and his rider. Do you give

the horse his might? Do you clothe his neck with a mane? Do you make him leap like the locust? His majestic

snorting is terrifying. He paused in the valley and exalts in his strength. He goes out to meet the

weapons. He laughs at fear and is not dismayed. He does

not turn back from the sword. Upon him rattle the quiver, the flashing spear and the javelin.

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