Teks -- Job 40:20 (NET)

40:20 For the hills bring it food, where all the wild animals play.

Tafsiran/Catatan -- Catatan Kata/Frasa (per frasa)

Wesley: Job 40:20 - Mountains

Though he lives most in the water, yet he often fetches his food from the land, and from the mountains or hills, which are nigh the river Nile.

Wesley: Job 40:20 - Play

They not only feed securely, but sport themselves by him, being taught by experience that he is gentle and harmless.

JFB: Job 40:20

The mountain is not his usual haunt. BOCHART says it is sometimes found there (?).

JFB: Job 40:20 - beasts . . . play

A graphic trait: though armed with such teeth, he lets the beasts play near him unhurt, for his food is grass.

Clarke: Job 40:20 - The mountains bring him forth food

The mountains bring him forth food - It cannot therefore be the hippopotamus, as he is seldom found far from the rivers where he has his chief residence

Clarke: Job 40:20 - Where all the beasts of the field play

Where all the beasts of the field play - He frequents those places where he can have most prey. He makes a mock of all the beasts of the field. They can neither resist his power, nor escape from his agility. All this answers to what we know of the mammoth, but not at all to the hippopotamus.

TSK: Job 40:20 - the mountains // where

the mountains : Job 40:15; Psa 147:8, Psa 147:9

where : Psa 104:14, Psa 104:26

Tafsiran/Catatan -- Catatan Kata/Frasa (per Ayat)

Poole: Job 40:20 - Where all the beasts of the field play

Though this creature be vastly great, and require much food, and no man careth for it; yet God provides for it out of his own stores, and makes even desert mountains to afford him sufficient sustenance. The hippopotamus also, though he live most in the water, fetched his food from the land, and from the mountains or hills, which are nigh unto the river Nile.

Where all the beasts of the field play they not only feed securely, but sport themselves by him or with him, being taught by experience that he is gentle and harmless, and never preys upon them.

Haydock: Job 40:20 - Leviathan // Cord

Leviathan: the whale, or some sea monster. (Challoner) ---

Protestants' marginal note, "or a whirlpool." (Haydock) ---

But some animal is designated; and Bochart understands the crocodile, which agrees very well with the context. The Thalmudists also say that the calbish is a small fish, which gets into the throat of the leviathan. They mean probably the ichneumon, which kills the crocodile by that means. Leviathan, "the winding serpent," (Calmet) often denotes the dragon or crocodile, (Psalm ciii. 26., and Isaias xxvii. 1.) which frequents the Nile. (Haydock) ---

It can live as well by land as under water, (Watson, p. 293) and hence may be translated, (Haydock) "the coupled dragon." (Parkhurst) ---

Moses mentions the choled, (Leviticus xi. 29.) which the Septuagint and most others translate, "the land crocodile:" but what could induce the Protestants "to render it tortoise, we are at a loss to determine." Crocodiles lay about sixty eggs, like those of geese, in the sand, the warmth of which soon hatches them. Their bodies are covered with scales, which are scarcely penetrable, except under the belly; and they are between twenty and thirty feet in length, running very fast, straight forward, though their feet be short, and they cannot turn easily. The have several rows of sharp teeth, which enter one within another, and their throat is very wide. (Button.) ---

The same word may however denote whales, (Parkhurst) which are the greatest fishes with which man is acquainted. (Haydock) ---

They may also be styled coupled dragons, because many smaller fishes accompany them, and they are well protected by scales, &c. (Menochius) ---

This huge fish, perhaps the whale, representing the devil, is subject to God. (Worthington) ---

Cord. The crocodile may be taken, but with the utmost hazard; though the Tentyrites attacked it without fear, chap. iii. 8. Herodotus (ii. 70.) says it may be caught with a hook, baited with hog's flesh, while the fisher has a pig grunting, at which the crocodile come open-mouthed. Having swallowed the hook, it is drawn to land, and its small eyes being filled with dirt it is easily slain. But the method was not yet invented, or was deemed too rash in Job's days.

Gill: Job 40:20 - Surely the mountains bring him forth food // where all the beasts of the field play

Surely the mountains bring him forth food,.... Grass, which grows on mountains, and is the food of the river horse as well as of the elephant; and therefore is furnished with teeth like a scythe to mow it down; and it is not a small quantity that will suffice it, mountains only can supply it; and marvellous it is that a creature bred in a river should come out of it to seek its food on mountains. There is a creature in the northern parts, as in Russia, Greenland, &c. which is called morss and sea morss, and by the description of it is much like the river horse, of the size of an ox, and having an head like one, with two large long teeth standing out of its upper jaw, and an hairy skin ^a, said to be an inch thick, and so tough that no lance will enter it ^b; it comes out of the sea, and by its teeth gets up to the tops of mountains, and having fed on grass rolls itself down again into the sea; and this it does by putting its hinder feet to its teeth, and so falls from the mountain with great celerity, as on a sledge ^c;

where all the beasts of the field play; skip and dance, and delight in each other, being in no fear of behemoth; whether understood of the elephant or river horse; since neither of them are carnivorous creatures that feed on other animals, but on grass only; and therefore the beasts of the field may feed with them quietly and securely. Pliny ^d says of the elephant, that meeting with cattle in the fields, it will make signs to them not to be afraid of it, and so they will go in company together.