Although the Wild Ass does not seem to have lived within the limits of the Holy Land, it was common enough in the surrounding country, and, from the frequent references made to it in Scriptures, was well known to the ancient Jews. We will now look at the various passages in which the Wild Ass is mentioned, and begin with the splendid description in Job xxxix. 5-8:
"Who hath sent out the wild ass free? or who hath loosed the bands of the wild ass?
"Whose house I have made the wilderness, and the barren lands (or salt places) his dwellings.
"He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the crying of the driver.
"The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after every green thing."
Here we have the animal described with the minuteness and truth of detail that can only be found in personal knowledge; its love of freedom, its avoidance of mankind, and its migration in search of pasture. Another allusion to the pasture-seeking habits of the animal is to be found in chapter vi. of the same book, verse 5: "Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass?" or, according to the version of the Jewish Bible, "over tender grass?"
The same author has several other allusions to the Wild Ass. See, for example, chap. xi. 12: "For vain man would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass's colt." And in chap. xxiv. 5, in speaking of the wicked and their doings, he uses the following metaphor: "Behold, as wild asses in the desert, go they forth to their work; rising betimes for a prey: the wilderness yieldeth food for them and their children," or for the young, as the passage may be more literally rendered. The same migratory habit is also mentioned by the prophet Jeremiah (chap. xiv. 6): "And the wild asses did stand in the high places, they snuffed up the wind like dragons; their eyes did fail, because there was no grass." There is another allusion to it in Hosea viii. 9: "For they are gone up to Assyria, a wild ass alone by himself."
THE WILD ASS.
"As wild asses in the desert go they forth."—Job xxiv. 5.