Job 41:5
Can you pet him like a bird or put him on a leash for your maidens?
BSB
ASV
Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? Or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?
KJV
Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?
Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? Or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens? 30. Why is it that our adversary is first called Behemoth, afterwards Leviathan, but is now compared to a 'bird,' in ridicule at his destruction? For Behemoth, as we have said, is interpreted 'monster,' ['bellua'] and it is shewn to be a quadruped, when it is said to eat hay as an ox. But Leviathan, as he is taken with a hook is doubtless set before us as a serpent in the waters.
Wilt thou play with him as with a bird?.... In the hand or cage: leviathan plays in the sea, but there is no playing with him by land, Psa 104:26; or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens? or young girls, as Mr. Broughton renders it; tie him in a string, as birds are for children to play with?
Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? - A bird that is tamed. The art of taming birds was doubtless early practiced, and they were kept for amusement. But the leviathan could not thus be tamed. Or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens? - For their amusement. For such purposes doubtless, birds were caught and caged. There is great force in this question, on the supposition that the crocodile is intended. Nothing could be more incongruous than the idea of securing so rough and unsightly a monster for the amusement of tender and delicate females.
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 walk5
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
Job 28:11He stops up the sources of the streams to bring what is hidden to light.
leads to
“I will go before you and level the mountains; I will break down the gates of bronze and cut through the bars of iron.
Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. At that time each…
who says to the depths of the sea, ‘Be dry, and I will dry up your currents,’
I have dug wells and drunk foreign waters. With the soles of my feet I have dried up all the streams of Egypt.”
He wraps up the waters in His clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their own weight.