Her young ones also suck up blood: and where the slain are, there is she. Her young ones also suck up blood: and where the slain are, there is she.
Quoted partly by Jesus Christ (Matthew 24:28). The food of young eagles is the blood of victims brought by the parent, when they are still too feeble to devour flesh.
Slain - as the vulture chiefly feeds on carcasses, it is included probably in the genus eagle.
Remarks:
(1) The instincts of the various beasts and birds lead them intuitively and unerringly to adopt the means best fitted for their sustenance and preservation. This instinct is the direct gift of God, and proves how consummately wise and considerate in the case of even His humbler creatures, God is. Shall we, then, harbour the thought for a moment that He who so providentially cares for birds and beasts can possibly be capable, as Job in affliction surmised, of harshness and injustice toward the noblest of His earthly creatures, man? (see Matthew 6:26.)
(2) Even those animals which seem to the superficial observer to be wanting in some of those beautiful instincts which characterize the majority (as, for instance, the ostrich was thought foolishly to neglect her young, Job 39:13-17) are really guided by instincts as appropriate for their particular wants and modes of life, after their kind, as other animals whose instincts impress us with their divine origination more palpably. The want of some particular instinct in one animal, which might seem to us objectionable, is really the result of omniscient counsel; and we can see in animals deficient in one respect some counterbalancing excellency. So in the trials of the godly, which seemed so unaccountable to Job as to form an objection against the wisdom and goodness of God, there lies underneath an all-wise design: a temporary and inconsiderable evil, in a sin-tainted world of imperfection, is permitted, and overruled to a solid and everlasting good to the child of God, and that for the glory of God, which is the final end of all God's doings.
(3) Cheerful submission to God's will, under the conviction of God's perfect wisdom and goodness, which cooperate for the believer's good even in the darkest dispensation, is the grand lesson to be learned from this address of God to Job. If man cannot even explain, much less bestow on the lower animals the instincts so happily varied to meet their several needs for their support and preservation, how preposterous and presumptuous it is for man, because he cannot see the reasons of God's afflictive dealings with him, to call in question His justice and goodness!