Ayub 41:10-30

41:10 Is it not fierce ¹  when it is awakened?

Who is he, then, who can stand before it? ² 

41:11 (Who has confronted ³  me that I should repay? ⁴ 

Everything under heaven belongs to me!) ⁵ 

41:12 I will not keep silent about its limbs,

and the extent of its might,

and the grace of its arrangement. ⁶ 

41:13 Who can uncover its outer covering? ⁷ 

Who can penetrate to the inside of its armor? ⁸ 

41:14 Who can open the doors of its mouth? ⁹ 

Its teeth all around are fearsome.

41:15 Its back ¹⁰  has rows of shields,

shut up closely ¹¹  together as with a seal;

41:16 each one is so close to the next ¹² 

that no air can come between them.

41:17 They lock tightly together, one to the next; ¹³ 

they cling together and cannot be separated.

41:18 Its snorting throws out flashes of light;

its eyes are like the red glow ¹⁴  of dawn.

41:19 Out of its mouth go flames, ¹⁵ 

sparks of fire shoot forth!

41:20 Smoke streams from its nostrils

as from a boiling pot over burning ¹⁶  rushes.

41:21 Its breath sets coals ablaze

and a flame shoots from its mouth.

41:22 Strength lodges in its neck,

and despair ¹⁷  runs before it.

41:23 The folds ¹⁸  of its flesh are tightly joined;

they are firm on it, immovable. ¹⁹ 

41:24 Its heart ²⁰  is hard as rock,

hard as a lower millstone.

41:25 When it rises up, the mighty are terrified,

at its thrashing about they withdraw. ²¹ 

41:26 Whoever strikes it with a sword ²² 

will have no effect, ²³ 

nor with the spear, arrow, or dart.

41:27 It regards iron as straw

and bronze as rotten wood.

41:28 Arrows ²⁴  do not make it flee;

slingstones become like chaff to it.

41:29 A club is counted ²⁵  as a piece of straw;

it laughs at the rattling of the lance.

41:30 Its underparts ²⁶  are the sharp points of potsherds,

it leaves its mark in the mud

like a threshing sledge. ²⁷ 

[41:10]  ¹ sn The description is of the animal, not the hunter (or fisherman). Leviathan is so fierce that no one can take him on alone.

[41:10]  ² tc MT has “before me” and can best be rendered as “Who then is he that can stand before me?” (ESV, NASB, NIV, NLT, NJPS). The following verse (11) favors the MT since both express the lesson to be learned from Leviathan: If a man cannot stand up to Leviathan, how can he stand up to its creator? The translation above has chosen to read the text as “before him” (cf. NRSV, NJB).

[41:11]  ³ tn The verb קָדַם (qadam) means “to come to meet; to come before; to confront” to the face.

[41:11]  ⁴ sn The verse seems an intrusion (and so E. Dhorme, H. H. Rowley, and many others change the pronouns to make it refer to the animal). But what the text is saying is that it is more dangerous to confront God than to confront this animal.

[41:11]  ⁵ tn This line also focuses on the sovereign God rather than Leviathan. H. H. Rowley, however, wants to change לִי־חוּא (li-hu’, “it [belongs] to me”) into לֹא הוּא (lo’ hu’, “there is no one”). So it would say that there is no one under the whole heaven who could challenge Leviathan and live, rather than saying it is more dangerous to challenge God to make him repay.

[41:12]  ⁶ tn Dhorme changes the noun into a verb, “I will tell,” and the last two words into אֵין עֶרֶךְ (’en ’erekh, “there is no comparison”). The result is “I will tell of his incomparable might.”

[41:13]  ⁷ tn Heb “the face of his garment,” referring to the outer garment or covering. Some take it to be the front as opposed to the back.

[41:13]  ⁸ tc The word רֶסֶן (resen) has often been rendered “bridle” (cf. ESV), but that leaves a number of unanswered questions. The LXX reads סִרְיוֹן (siryon), with the transposition of letters, but that means “coat of armor.” If the metathesis stands, there is also support from the cognate Akkadian.

[41:14]  ⁹ tn Heb “his face.”

[41:15]  ¹⁰ tc The MT has גַּאֲוָה (ga’avah, “his pride”), but the LXX, Aquila, and the Vulgate all read גַּוּוֹ (gavvo, “his back”). Almost all the modern English versions follow the variant reading, speaking about “his [or its] back.”

[41:15]  ¹¹ tn Instead of צָר (tsar, “closely”) the LXX has צֹר (tsor, “stone”) to say that the seal was rock hard.

[41:16]  ¹² tn The expression “each one…to the next” is literally “one with one.”

[41:17]  ¹³ tn Heb “a man with his brother.”

[41:18]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the eyelids,” but it represents the early beams of the dawn as the cover of night lifts.

[41:19]  ¹⁵ 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.

[41:20]  ¹⁶ tn The word “burning” is supplied. The Syriac and Vulgate have “a seething and boiling pot” (reading אֹגֵם [’ogem] for אַגְמֹן [’agmon]). This view is widely accepted.

[41:22]  ¹⁷ 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.”

[41:23]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “fallings.”

[41:23]  ¹⁹ tn The last clause says “it cannot be moved.” But this part will function adverbially in the sentence.

[41:24]  ²⁰ 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.

[41:25]  ²¹ tc This verse has created all kinds of problems for the commentators. The first part is workable: “when he raises himself up, the mighty [the gods] are terrified.” The mythological approach would render אֵלִים (’elim) as “gods.” But the last two words, which could be rendered “at the breaking [crashing, or breakers] they fail,” receive much attention. E. Dhorme (Job, 639) suggests “majesty” for “raising up” and “billows” (גַּלִּים, gallim) for אֵלִים (’elim), and gets a better parallelism: “the billows are afraid of his majesty, and the waves draw back.” But H. H. Rowley (Job [NCBC], 263) does not think this is relevant to the context, which is talking about the creature’s defense against attack. The RSV works well for the first part, but the second part need some change; so Rowley adopts “in their dire consternation they are beside themselves.”

[41:26]  ²² tn This is the clearest reading, following A. B. Davidson, Job, 285. The versions took different readings of the construction.

[41:26]  ²³ tn The verb קוּם (qum, “stand”) with בְּלִי (bÿli, “not”) has the sense of “does not hold firm,” or “gives way.”

[41:28]  ²⁴ tn Heb “the son of the bow.”

[41:29]  ²⁵ tn The verb is plural, but since there is no expressed subject it is translated as a passive here.

[41:30]  ²⁶ tn Heb “under him.”

[41:30]  ²⁷ tn Here only the word “sharp” is present, but in passages like Isa 41:15 it is joined with “threshing sledge.” Here and in Amos 1:3 and Isa 28:27 the word stands alone, but represents the “sledge.”