The So-called Ostrich in the God Speeches of the Book of Job (Job 39,13-18) Biblical scholars and literary critics continue to debate the meaning and adequacy of God’s response to Job, the climax of one of the great works of world literature. At the end of the first speech, God asks Job questions about a series of wild and dangerous animals (38,39 – 39,30). As Carol Newsom observes, “these images play such an important role in the development of the significance of the divine speeches, they deserve close attention” (1). Because of the difficulties it poses for interpretation, much discussion has focused on the so- called ostrich pericope (39,13-18). A whole body of proposed emendations and interpretations has grown up to explain a number of problems with the Hebrew text. In verse 13, why is the hapax legomenon µynnr used of an ostrich? Why does it have a plural ending? What does her “wing rejoices” mean? What does “a gracious pinion and plumage” in the second half of verse 13 mean? Does the mother bird “abandon” (v. 14) her eggs and is she “cruel” (v. 16) to her young? If she is an ostrich, how could a wild animal step on “her” (v. 15)? What does the hapax ayrmt in verse 18 mean? How can µwrmb, literally “on the height”, apply to an ostrich? Despite all these problems, few have questioned the identification with an ostrich, and none that I am aware of have used biological information to investigate other possible species. The thesis of this article is twofold. First, the hapax µynnr is not an ostrich and there is enough biological information in the passage to identify a more likely bird, probably a sand grouse. Second, iden- tifying the correct type of bird resolves a number of difficulties for translation and interpretation, and helps clarify the literary role of the passage in the book of Job. The first section of the article presents a translation of the passage and the arguments against identifying µynnr as an ostrich. The second part of the article examines evidence from the passage about the bird’s nesting habits, behaviour, and song that indicate the µynnr is probably a sand grouse. At the same time these first two sections begin to show that an understanding of the sand grouse and its behaviours helps to (1) C.A. NEWSOM, The Book of Job. A Contest of Moral Imaginations (Oxford 2003) 245.