Job 39:17 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Because God hath deprived her of wisdom The want of natural affection to her young is not the only reproach due to the ostrich. “She is likewise inconsiderate and foolish in her private capacity, particularly in her choice of food, which is frequently highly detrimental and pernicious to her, for she swallows every thing greedily and indiscriminately, whether it be pieces of rags, leather, wood, stone, or even iron.” “When I was at Oran,” proceeds Dr. Shaw, “I saw one of these birds swallow, without any seeming uneasiness or inconvenience, several leaden bullets, as they were thrown upon the floor, scorching hot from the mould.” A second instance of her folly is, that, to secure herself, she will thrust her head into the shrubs, though her body which is of a great height, be exposed. As a third instance, it is said that she is sometimes taken by a stratagem of the sportsman, who clothes himself with the skin of an ostrich, putting his right hand into the skin of the neck, and moving it in the same manner as the ostrich does its own neck, and with his left hand strowing some seed from a bag that hangs down; by this means he entices the bird, and throws it into the valleys. A fourth is, the leaving her eggs, as has been just mentioned. A fifth instance is taken from the shape of its body, having a little head, and scarce any brain: hence historians tell us, that the Emperor Heliogabalus, to gratify his luxurious taste, together with other delicacies, such as the combs of cocks, the tongues of pheasants and nightingales, the eggs of partridges, the heads of parrots and peacocks, the brains of thrushes, had likewise served up to him, at one entertainment, the heads of six hundred ostriches for the sake of the brains; because, being so very small, a less number would not have been sufficient to make a dish. See Chappelow.