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In good liking - After the fawns have sucked for some time, the dam leads them to the pastures, where they feed on different kinds of herbage; but not on corn, for they are not born before harvest-time in Arabia and Palestine, and the stag does not feed on corn, but on grass, moss, and the shoots of the fir, beech, and other trees: therefore the word בר bar, here translated corn, should be translated the open field or country. See Parkhurst. Their nurslings bound away - Mr. Good. In a short time they become independent of the mother, leave her, and return no more. The spirit of the questions in these verses appears to be the following: - Understandest thou the cause of breeding of the mountain goats, etc.? Art thou acquainted with the course and progress of the parturition, and the manner in which the bones grow, and acquire solidity in the womb? See Mr. Good's observations. Houbigant's version appears very correct: (Knowest thou) "how their young ones grow up, increase in the fields, and once departing, return to them no more?"
Their young ones are in good liking - Hebrew “they are fat;” and hence, it means that they are strong and robust.
They grow up with corn - Herder, Gesenius, Noyes, Umbreit, and Rosenmuller render this, “in the wilderness,” or “field.” The proper and usual meaning of the word used here (בר bâr ) is corn (grain); but in Chaldee it has the sense of open fields, or country. The same idea is found in the Arabic, and this sense seems to be required by the connection. The idea is not that they are nurtured with grain, which would require the care of man, but that they are nurtured under the direct eye of God far away from human dwellings, and even when they go away from their dam and return no more to the place of their birth. This is one of the instances, therefore, in which the connection seems to require us to adopt a signification that does not elsewhere occur in the Hebrew, but which is found in the cognate languages.
They go forth, and return not unto them - God guards and preserves them, even when they wander away from their dam, and are left helpless. Many of the young of animals require long attention from man, many are kept for a considerable period by the side of the mother, but the idea here seems to be, that the young of the wild goat and of the fawn are thrown early on the providence of God, and are protected by him alone. The particular care of Providence over these animals seems to be specified because there are no others that are exposed to so many dangers in their early life. “Every creature then is a formidable enemy. The eagle, the falcon, the osprey, the wolf, the dog, and all the rapacious animals of the cat kind, are in continual employment to find out their retreat. But what is more unnatural still, the stag himself is a professed enemy, and she, the hind, is obliged to use all her arts to conceal her young from him, as from the most dangerous of her pursuers.” “Goldsmith‘s Nat. His.”