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