Job41chapter 41

The chapter opens as a fishing question, and the joke is deadpan. Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook, or his tongue with a cord? Canst thou put a hook into his nose, or bore his jaw through with a thorn? Those are the ordinary tools — line, reed cord, and a thorn pushed through the gill of a catch to carry it home. Then: will he make many supplications to thee? will he make a covenant with thee to be thy servant for ever? Wilt thou play with him as with a bird, or bind him for thy maidens? Shall the traders make a banquet of him and part him among the merchants?

The description that follows is armour, weapon by weapon. His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal, so near one another that no air comes between; they are joined and cannot be sundered. His teeth are terrible round about. His sneezings flash light and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning — spray thrown up in sunlight, and eyes just breaking the waterline at dawn. Out of his mouth go burning lamps and sparks of fire; smoke goes out of his nostrils as out of a seething pot. His breath kindles coals. The scales of his belly are like sharp potsherds, and he leaves a shining wake behind him and makes the deep boil like a pot.

As with Behemoth, the identification is contested and the text supports the argument rather than settling it. The common reading is the Nile crocodile — armoured, unhookable, hunted only with harpoons, and known across the ancient world; Greek writers described the Egyptian methods for taking one. Others hold that the fire and smoke language and the sheer terror of the passage point past any surviving animal. The house reading takes the description at face value and does not force it into a species.

The closing lines are why the chapter is there. He counts iron as straw and bronze as rotten wood; the arrow cannot make him flee; darts are counted as stubble; he laughs at the shaking of a spear. Upon earth there is not his like, made without fear; he beholds all high things, and is a king over all the children of pride.