Bible Strands
Job 39:6
I made the wilderness his home and the salt flats his dwelling.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — God addresses Job within a rhetorical discourse describing untamable creatures, immediately following the question of who released the wild donkey.
The words — The Hebrew verb שְׂמַתִּי (sam.ti) translates literally as "I appointed" or "I made," while the noun מְלֵחָה (me.le.chah) denotes "saltiness" or "salt flats."
The thread — The depiction of barren, salted ground parallels the desolation in Deuteronomy 29:23 and Psalms 107:34, while the donkey's habitat mirrors the wasteland foraging described in Job 24:5.
Why it lands — The verse states that God sovereignly assigned desolate terrain as the wild donkey's home and dwelling. This establishes the creature's complete independence from human settlement and the city's noise.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Whose house I have made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings.
Cross-references
- Psalms 107:34 and fruitful land into fields of salt, because of the wickedness of its dwellers.
- Deuteronomy 29:23 All its soil will be a burning waste of sulfur and salt, unsown and unproductive, with no plant growing on it, just like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in His fierce anger.
- Job 24:5 Indeed, like wild donkeys in the desert, the poor go to work foraging for food; the wasteland is food for their children.
- Jeremiah 2:24 a wild donkey at home in the wilderness, sniffing the wind in the heat of her desire. Who can restrain her passion? All who seek her need not weary themselves; in mating season they will find her.
- Jeremiah 17:6 He will be like a shrub in the desert; he will not see when prosperity comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.
- Ezekiel 47:11 But the swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they will be left for salt.
- Hosea 8:9 For they have gone up to Assyria like a wild donkey on its own. Ephraim has hired lovers.