truth—that power is the understanding. As the horse is a nobler, more courageous, active, and fiery animal than others of the brute creation, possessing a greater degree of warmth and fervour, sleeping but little, and ever distinguished by the superiority of his instinct, so is he a fitting symbol of the noble understanding with which man is gifted, and bears this meaning in every passage throughout the Holy Word. The sublime and beautifully descriptive passage in Job (xxxix. 19), "Hast thou given the horse strength? hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? the glory of his nostrils is terrible. He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield. He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage: neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets. Ha, ha! and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting."[1]
- ↑ A celebrated German commentator of the last century, thinks that none but a military man can understand this description of the war horse, or thoroughly appreciate it. "I have myself," he says: "perhaps rode more horses than many who have become authors and illustrators of the Bible: but one part of the description, namely, the behaviour of the horse on the approach of a hostile army, I only understood rightly from what old officers have related unto me; and as to the meaning of the two lines, 'hast thou clothed his neck with ire' [thunder], 'and the grandeur of his neighing is terror' [glory of his nostrils], it had escaped me; indeed, the latter I had not understood, until a person, who had had an opportunity of seeing several stallions together, informed me, and then I recollected that, in my eighteenth year, I had seen their bristled-up necks, and heard their fierce cries, when rushing to attack each other."—Kitto's Notes on Job.
