Ayub 41:14

41:14 Who can open the doors of its mouth? ¹ 

Its teeth all around are fearsome.

Ayub 41:16-19

41:16 each one is so close to the next ² 

that no air can come between them.

41:17 They lock tightly together, one to the next; ³ 

they cling together and cannot be separated.

41:18 Its snorting throws out flashes of light;

its eyes are like the red glow ⁴  of dawn.

41:19 Out of its mouth go flames, ⁵ 

sparks of fire shoot forth!

Ayub 41:21-22

41:21 Its breath sets coals ablaze

and a flame shoots from its mouth.

41:22 Strength lodges in its neck,

and despair ⁶  runs before it.

Ayub 41:24

41:24 Its heart ⁷  is hard as rock,

hard as a lower millstone.

Ayub 41:29

41:29 A club is counted ⁸  as a piece of straw;

it laughs at the rattling of the lance.

[41:14]  ¹ tn Heb “his face.”

[41:16]  ² tn The expression “each one…to the next” is literally “one with one.”

[41:17]  ³ tn Heb “a man with his brother.”

[41:18]  ⁴ tn Heb “the eyelids,” but it represents the early beams of the dawn as the cover of night lifts.

[41:19]  ⁵ sn For the animal, the image is that of pent-up breath with water in a hot steam jet coming from its mouth, like a stream of fire in the rays of the sun. The language is hyperbolic, probably to reflect the pagan ideas of the dragon of the deep in a polemical way – they feared it as a fire breathing monster, but in reality it might have been a steamy crocodile.

[41:22]  ⁶ tn This word, דְּאָבָה (dÿ’avah) is a hapax legomenon. But the verbal root means “to languish; to pine.” A related noun talks of dejection and despair in Deut 28:65. So here “despair” as a translation is preferable to “terror.”

[41:24]  ⁷ tn The description of his heart being “hard” means that he is cruel and fearless. The word for “hard” is the word encountered before for molten or cast metal.

[41:29]  ⁸ tn The verb is plural, but since there is no expressed subject it is translated as a passive here.