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• This is the word the Bible aims at people. It calls Ishmael "a wild donkey of a man", pictures Israel going up to Assyria as a wild donkey off on its own, compares Judah chasing other gods to a mare in heat that nothing can hold back, and likens the destitute who forage in the wilderness to a herd of wild donkeys.Gen 16:12Hos 8:9Jer 2:24Job 24:5
• It carries the picture of land that has gone back to the wild: a deserted town left as a playground for wild donkeys, and the animals standing on bare hills gasping for air when the rain fails.Isa 32:14Jer 14:6
• It names the animal in scenes about food and water, as a creature God himself supplies out beyond any farm, and in a saying that a donkey does not bray while it has grass in front of it.Psa 104:11Job 6:5
• It becomes the measure of what will never be taught, in Zophar's line about an empty-headed man and a wild donkey's colt.Job 11:12

• Both words name the same creature, the untamed donkey of the desert that belongs to nobody, and Job 39:5 uses them as matching terms in the two halves of one question, the second word answering the first.Job 39:5
• Both are described in the language of setting a captive loose: God asks who let the one go free and who untied the other's ropes, so each names an animal defined by not being owned or driven.Job 39:5

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• This donkey belongs to open country, not to a household. The wasteland, the bare heights and the salt flats are where it is at home and where it goes out to forage.Job 24:5Jer 14:6
• Nobody owns it and nobody drives it, and that freedom is the whole point of the word. God takes the credit for letting it go loose and untying the ropes that would have held it.Job 39:5
• It feeds and waters itself. It brays because there is no grass in front of it, and it drinks from the streams God sends rather than from a trough somebody filled.Job 6:5Psa 104:11
• It stands for a person nobody can hold or manage: Ishmael, whose hand will be against everyone, and Ephraim heading off to Assyria all on its own.Gen 16:12Hos 8:9
• It pictures craving that refuses to be curbed, a female in heat sniffing the wind in the wilderness where no one can turn her back.Jer 2:24
• It marks land emptied of people. When a city is abandoned, these donkeys move into the ruins and enjoy them as pasture.Isa 32:14
• It becomes a byword for someone who cannot be taught, in a bleak saying that a fool will gain sense about the time a wild donkey's colt is born human.Job 11:12

• Both are donkeys of the same kind, and the text takes their hunger and thirst for granted in the same way. The difference is who answers it: one has an owner who opens a sack of feed for it, the other brays when it finds no grass.Gen 42:27Job 6:5
• Both become pictures of people, pulling in opposite directions. The owned donkey stands for dogged, load-bearing labor, and the untamed one for a man who will not be held.Gen 49:14Gen 16:12

• This is the household donkey, counted as somebody's property. It turns up in the lists that measure a person's wealth, alongside sheep, cattle, camels and servants, and even in a census tally of what the returning exiles owned.Gen 12:16Gen 30:43Ezr 2:67
• It carries the load. Sacks of grain, provisions and gifts are strapped onto it for a journey, and at the overnight stop its owner opens a sack to give it feed.Gen 42:26Gen 45:231Sa 25:18
• It is ridden, by an ordinary traveler and by a king making a deliberately humble entrance rather than arriving on a warhorse.Exo 4:201Sa 25:20Zec 9:9
• It works in harness under a driver, so the rules that govern work apply to it: it rests on the seventh day like the household it serves, and it may not be yoked together with an ox for plowing.Deu 5:14Exo 23:12Deu 22:10
• Israel's law protects it precisely because it belongs to someone. A neighbor's stray one must be brought back, one collapsing under its burden must be helped up, a firstborn one must be bought back with a lamb, and wanting your neighbor's is forbidden outright.Exo 23:4Exo 23:5Exo 13:13Exo 20:17
• Because it is owned, it can also be taken away: numbered by the tens of thousands in the spoils of war, destroyed along with a condemned city, or seized from orphans by men who prey on the defenseless.Num 31:34Jos 6:21Job 24:3
• It is the animal that knows a master. A prophet shames Israel by pointing out that this donkey at least recognizes the trough its owner fills, and a proverb pairs it with the bridle that steers it.Isa 1:3Pro 26:3

• Names the untamed donkey of the open country, and the point of it is that nobody holds the rope: its home is the barren land, and it has been let loose from every harness.Job 39:5Job 24:5
• Belongs to the emptied wild, so it turns up in pictures of abandoned towns and untouched hills where only animals are left.Isa 32:14Psa 104:11Jer 14:6
• Supplies the standard image for an appetite nothing restrains: the animal ranging where it likes, sniffing the wind for what it wants.Jer 2:24Hos 8:9
• Is used as an insult about a person's raw, unschooled nature, calling someone the offspring of a beast that was never broken in.Job 11:12

• Both name the same kind of animal, and each is pictured needing pasture and water: the tame herd feeding in the field, the untamed one crying out only when the grass fails.Job 1:14Job 6:5
• Each becomes a picture of a person and not merely a name for livestock, the one for lowly peaceable arrival, the other for a life spent at odds with everyone.Zec 9:9Gen 16:12

• Names a donkey somebody owns, counted among a person's livestock as a measure of wealth alongside sheep, camels and oxen.Gen 12:16Job 1:3Job 42:121Ch 27:30
• Refers to the female animal, so it appears in herds counted with their nursing young and given away as breeding stock.Gen 32:15Gen 49:11
• Is the animal people saddle and ride, on ordinary errands and on solemn or royal ones.Num 22:21Jdg 5:102Ki 4:24Zec 9:9
• Stands under a master, so it can go missing and be hunted for, and can be driven or beaten when it will not go the way it is pushed.1Sa 9:3Num 22:23Num 22:27

• Names a kind of animal and not a stage of life: the untamed donkey of the open country, whose whole point is that nobody holds its rope and it has no driver shouting at it.Job 39:5Job 24:5
• Belongs to the emptied wild, drinking at desert streams, standing on bare heights, and taking over towns that people have abandoned.Psa 104:11Jer 14:6Isa 32:14
• Must find its own food and cries out when it cannot, so it becomes the picture of an appetite nothing restrains, ranging where it likes and sniffing the wind for what it wants.Job 6:5Jer 2:24
• Describes a person nobody can manage, whether a man whose hand is against everyone or a nation that has wandered off on its own.Gen 16:12Hos 8:9

• Both name a donkey, and Job puts them side by side in one phrase, rendered "a wild donkey's colt": one word supplies the youth, the other supplies the wildness, and together they describe a man who was never taught anything.Job 11:12
• Each is used of people and not only of livestock, the young donkey for a king who arrives humbly and the wild one for a man at odds with everyone around him.Zec 9:9Gen 16:12
• Both are pictured needing pasture, and the contrast sits right there: one is given feed at the plow, while the other brays because the grass has run out.Isa 30:24Job 6:5

• Names an age and not a kind of animal: the young donkey, listed with the newborn stock of a herd and named as the offspring tied beside its mother.Gen 32:15Gen 49:11
• Is the working animal people own and put to use, ridden by the sons of Israel's leaders, loaded with treasure, and harnessed to break up a field.Jdg 10:4Jdg 12:14Isa 30:6Isa 30:24
• Is fed by human hands rather than left to forage, eating the clean provender that farmers prepare for their stock.Isa 30:24
• Carries the promised king into his city, a deliberately lowly and peaceable mount instead of a war horse.Zec 9:9