Text -- Job 41:1-21 (NET)

The Description of Leviathan

41:1 “Can you pull in Leviathan with a hook, and tie down its tongue with a rope? 41:2 Can you put a cord through its nose, or pierce its jaw with a hook? 41:3 Will it make numerous supplications to you, will it speak to you with tender words? 41:4 Will it make a pact with you, so you could take it as your slave for life? 41:5 Can you play with it, like a bird, or tie it on a leash for your girls? 41:6 Will partners bargain for it? Will they divide it up among the merchants? 41:7 Can you fill its hide with harpoons or its head with fishing spears? 41:8 If you lay your hand on it, you will remember the fight, and you will never do it again! 41:9 See, his expectation is wrong, he is laid low even at the sight of it. 41:10 Is it not fierce when it is awakened? Who is he, then, who can stand before it? 41:11 (Who has confronted me that I should repay? Everything under heaven belongs to me!) 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.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Job 41:1

¹ sn Beginning with 41:1, the verse numbers through 41:9 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 41:1 ET = 40:25 HT, 41:2 ET = 40:26 HT, etc., through 41:34 ET = 41:26 HT. The Hebrew verse numbers in the remainder of the chapter differ from the verse numbers in the English Bible. Beginning with 42:1 the verse numbers in the ET and HT are again the same.

² tn The verb מָשַׁךְ (mashakh) means “to extract from the water; to fish.” The question here includes the use of a hook to fish the creature out of the water so that its jaws can be tied safely.

³ tn The verb שָׁקַע (shaqa’) means “to cause to sink,” if it is connected with the word in Amos 8:8 and 9:5. But it may have the sense of “to tie; to bind.” If the rope were put around the tongue and jaw, binding tightly would be the sense.

NET Notes: Job 41:3

¹ tn The line asks if the animal, when caught and tied and under control, would keep on begging for mercy. Absolutely not. It is not in the nature of the beast. The construction uses יַרְבֶּה (yarbeh, “[will] he multiply” [= “make numerous”]), with the object, “supplications” i.e., prayers for mercy.

² tn The rhetorical question again affirms the opposite. The poem is portraying the creature as powerful and insensitive.

NET Notes: Job 41:4

¹ tn Heb “will he cut a covenant.”

² tn The imperfect verb serves to express what the covenant pact would cover, namely, “that you take.”

NET Notes: Job 41:5

¹ tn The Hebrew verb is שָׂחַק (sakhaq, “to sport; to trifle; to play,” Ps 104:26).

² tn The idea may include putting Leviathan on a leash. D. W. Thomas suggested on the basis of an Arabic cognate that it could be rendered “tie him with a string like a young sparrow” (VT 14 [1964]: 114ff.).

NET Notes: Job 41:6

¹ tn The word חָבַּר (khabbar) is a hapax legomenon, but the meaning is “to associate” since it is etymologically related to the verb “to join together.” The idea is that fishermen usually work in companies or groups, and then divide up the catch when they come ashore – which involves bargaining.

² tn The word כָּרַה (karah) means “to sell.” With the preposition עַל (’al, “upon”) it has the sense “to bargain over something.”

³ tn The verb means “to cut up; to divide up” in the sense of selling the dead body (see Exod 21:35). This will be between them and the merchants (כְּנַעֲנִים, kÿna’anim).

NET Notes: Job 41:8

¹ tn The verse uses two imperatives which can be interpreted in sequence: do this, and then this will happen.

NET Notes: Job 41:9

¹ sn Job 41:9 in the English Bible is 41:1 in the Hebrew text (BHS). From here to the end of the chapter the Hebrew verse numbers differ from those in the English Bible, with 41:10 ET = 41:2 HT, 41:11 ET = 41:3 HT, etc. See also the note on 41:1.

² tn The line is difficult. “His hope [= expectation]” must refer to any assailant who hopes or expects to capture the creature. Because there is no antecedent, Dhorme and others transpose it with the next verse. The point is that the man who thought he was sufficient to confront Leviathan soon finds his hope – his expectation – false (a derivative from the verb כָּזַב [kazab, “lie”] is used for a mirage).

³ tn There is an interrogative particle in this line, which most commentators ignore. But others freely emend the MT. Gunkel, following the mythological approach, has “his appearance casts down even a god.” Cheyne likewise has: “even divine beings the fear of him brings low” (JQR 9 [1896/97]: 579). Pope has, “Were not the gods cast down at the sight of him?” There is no need to bring in this mythological element.

NET Notes: Job 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.

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).

NET Notes: Job 41:11

¹ tn The verb קָדַם (qadam) means “to come to meet; to come before; to confront” to the face.

² 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.

³ 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.

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.