Job 39:5 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Who hath sent out the wild ass free? Who hath given him this disposition, that he loves freedom, and hates that subjection which other creatures quietly endure. Compare Job 11:12; Hosea 8:9; in which, and other places of Scripture, the wild ass is described as delighting in the wilderness; perverse and obstinate in his behaviour; running with great swiftness whither his lust, hunger, thirst, or other desires draw him. Who hath loosed the bands of the wild ass? That is, who keeps him from receiving the bands, and submitting to the service of man? Who hath made him so untractable and unmanageable? Which is the more strange because home-bred asses are so tame and tractable. The word ערוד, gnarod, here translated wild ass, is not the same with that used in the former clause, which is פרא, pere; and Rabbi Levi makes this difference between them, that the former means an animal found in the wilderness, which eateth herbs, and the latter, asinus agri vel sylvestris, the ass which frequents the cultivated grounds and woods, and is supported by their produce. Bochart, however, thinks they ought not to be distinguished, and that one and the same animal is meant in both places.