Text -- Job 41:12-34 (NET)

41:12 I will not keep silent about its limbs, and the extent of its might, and the grace of its arrangement. 41:13 Who can uncover its outer covering? Who can penetrate to the inside of its armor? 41:14 Who can open the doors of its mouth? Its teeth all around are fearsome. 41:15 Its back has rows of shields, shut up closely together as with a seal; 41:16 each one is so close to the next that no air can come between them. 41:17 They lock tightly together, one to the next; they cling together and cannot be separated. 41:18 Its snorting throws out flashes of light; its eyes are like the red glow of dawn. 41:19 Out of its mouth go flames, sparks of fire shoot forth! 41:20 Smoke streams from its nostrils as from a boiling pot over burning rushes. 41:21 Its breath sets coals ablaze and a flame shoots from its mouth. 41:22 Strength lodges in its neck, and despair runs before it. 41:23 The folds of its flesh are tightly joined; they are firm on it, immovable. 41:24 Its heart 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. 41:26 Whoever strikes it with a sword will have no effect, nor with the spear, arrow, or dart. 41:27 It regards iron as straw and bronze as rotten wood. 41:28 Arrows do not make it flee; slingstones become like chaff to it. 41:29 A club is counted as a piece of straw; it laughs at the rattling of the lance. 41:30 Its underparts are the sharp points of potsherds, it leaves its mark in the mud like a threshing sledge. 41:31 It makes the deep boil like a cauldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment, 41:32 It leaves a glistening wake behind it; one would think the deep had a head of white hair. 41:33 The likes of it is not on earth, a creature without fear. 41:34 It looks on every haughty being; it is king over all that are proud.”

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Job 41:12

¹ 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.”

NET Notes: Job 41:13

¹ 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.

² 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.

NET Notes: Job 41:14

¹ tn Heb “his face.”

NET Notes: Job 41:15

¹ 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.”

² tn Instead of צָר (tsar, “closely”) the LXX has צֹר (tsor, “stone”) to say that the seal was rock hard.

NET Notes: Job 41:16

¹ tn The expression “each one…to the next” is literally “one with one.”

NET Notes: Job 41:17

¹ tn Heb “a man with his brother.”

NET Notes: Job 41:18

¹ tn Heb “the eyelids,” but it represents the early beams of the dawn as the cover of night lifts.

NET Notes: Job 41:19

¹ 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.

NET Notes: Job 41:20

¹ 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.

NET Notes: Job 41:22

¹ 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.”

NET Notes: Job 41:23

¹ tn Heb “fallings.”

² tn The last clause says “it cannot be moved.” But this part will function adverbially in the sentence.

NET Notes: Job 41:24

¹ 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.

NET Notes: Job 41:25

¹ 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.”

NET Notes: Job 41:26

¹ tn This is the clearest reading, following A. B. Davidson, Job, 285. The versions took different readings of the construction.

² tn The verb קוּם (qum, “stand”) with בְּלִי (bÿli, “not”) has the sense of “does not hold firm,” or “gives way.”

NET Notes: Job 41:28

¹ tn Heb “the son of the bow.”

NET Notes: Job 41:29

¹ tn The verb is plural, but since there is no expressed subject it is translated as a passive here.

NET Notes: Job 41:30

¹ tn Heb “under him.”

² 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.”

NET Notes: Job 41:31

¹ sn The idea is either that the sea is stirred up like the foam from beating the ingredients together, or it is the musk-smell that is the point of comparison.

NET Notes: Job 41:33

¹ tn Heb “one who was made.”

NET Notes: Job 41:34

¹ tn Heb “the sons of pride.” Dhorme repoints the last word to get “all the wild beasts,” but this misses the point of the verse. This animal looks over every proud creature – but he is king of them all in that department.