Job 40:18
His bones are tubes of bronze; his limbs are rods of iron.
BSB
ASV
His bones are as tubes of brass; His limbs are like bars of iron.
KJV
His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.
His bones are as strong pieces of brass: his bones are as bars of iron. Than which nothing is stronger. The repetition is made for greater illustration and confirmation; but what is said is not applicable to the elephant, whose bones are porous and rimous, light and spongy for the most part, as appears from the osteology (k) of it; excepting its teeth, which are the ivory; though the teeth of the river horse are said to exceed them in hardness (l); and artificers say (m) they are wrought with greater difficulty than ivory.
His bones are as strong pieces of brass-bars of iron - The tusk I have mentioned above is uncommonly hard, solid, and weighty for its size.
On the other hand, Job 40:21, 22 are characteristic of the amphibious river horse. So leviathan (the twisting animal), Job 41:1, is a generalized term for cetacea, pythons, saurians of the neighboring seas and rivers, including the crocodile, which is the most prominent, and is often associated with the river horse by old writers.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Isaiah 48:4For I knew that you are stubborn; your neck is iron and your forehead is bronze.
leads to
You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit, just as your fathers did.
The LORD also said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and they are indeed a stiff-necked people.
But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder; they stopped up their ears from hearing.
A man who remains stiff-necked after much reproof will suddenly be shattered beyond recovery.
But because of your hard and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
Through
Job 7:12Am I the sea, or the monster of the deep, that You must keep me under guard?
leads to
On what were its foundations set, or who laid its cornerstone,
He has walled me in so I cannot escape; He has weighed me down with chains.
What is man that You should exalt him, that You should set Your heart upon him,