איוב, פרק ל״ט, פסוק ט״ז

The natural world is filled with examples of fierce maternal devotion, but the behavior of the ostrich stands in stark contrast to every basic instinct of motherhood. Rather than nurturing her young, the mother bird displays shocking cruelty, alienation, and complete indifference toward her offspring.

The primary approach among commentators is that she actively hardens her heart against her chicks. She distracts her mind from her children, completely erasing them from her thoughts and forgetting they even exist [מצודת ציון, רלב״ג]. She treats her offspring as if they do not belong to her at all, abandoning them to the wild and leaving them to fend for themselves [רש״י, רמב״ן, אבן עזרא, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. In her eyes, her own children are considered as absolute nothingness [מלבי״ם]. She does not bother raising them; at most, she might leave behind a single rotten egg to breed worms for the chicks to eat [מלבי״ם].

A different perspective suggests that this abandonment is driven by vanity. The mother leaves her children behind to sit along the roads, proudly showing off her beautiful wings to passersby. In doing so, she neglects her young for something that is not truly hers, as her beauty ultimately belongs to God, who created her [אלשיך].

This profound indifference extends to the many dangers that threaten her young. While other birds anxiously guard their nests, this mother lacks any natural fear that her eggs might be crushed by a passing foot or that her chicks might be snatched away. Because she refuses to protect them, all the energy and effort she invested in laying and incubating the eggs are completely wasted [אבן עזרא, מצודת דוד, ביאור שטיינזלץ, רמב״ן]. Following the idea of her vanity, this wasted effort can also be understood as her pointless trouble in flapping her wings for show. It is a useless display performed in total blindness to the very real dangers lurking around her and her abandoned children [אלשיך].