Job 41
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The Description of Leviathan

1 “Can you pull in Leviathan with a hook,

and tie down its tongue with a rope?

2Can you put a cord through its nose,

or pierce its jaw with a hook?

3Will it make numerous supplications to you,

will it speak to you with tender words?

4Will it make a pact with you,

so you could take it as your slave for life?

5Can you play with it, like a bird,

or tie it on a leash for your girls?

6Will partners bargain for it?

Will they divide it up among the merchants?

7Can you fill its hide with harpoons

or its head with fishing spears?

8If you lay your hand on it,

you will remember the fight,

and you will never do it again!

9 See, his expectation is wrong,

he is laid low even at the sight of it.

10Is it not fierce when it is awakened?

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

11(Who has confronted me that I should repay?

Everything under heaven belongs to me!)

12I will not keep silent about its limbs,

and the extent of its might,

and the grace of its arrangement.

13Who can uncover its outer covering?

Who can penetrate to the inside of its armor?

14Who can open the doors of its mouth?

Its teeth all around are fearsome.

15Its back has rows of shields,

shut up closely together as with a seal;

16each one is so close to the next

that no air can come between them.

17They lock tightly together, one to the next;

they cling together and cannot be separated.

18Its snorting throws out flashes of light;

its eyes are like the red glow of dawn.

19Out of its mouth go flames,

sparks of fire shoot forth!

20Smoke streams from its nostrils

as from a boiling pot over burning rushes.

21Its breath sets coals ablaze

and a flame shoots from its mouth.

22Strength lodges in its neck,

and despair runs before it.

23The folds of its flesh are tightly joined;

they are firm on it, immovable.

24Its heart is hard as rock,

hard as a lower millstone.

25When it rises up, the mighty are terrified,

at its thrashing about they withdraw.

26Whoever strikes it with a sword

will have no effect,

nor with the spear, arrow, or dart.

27It regards iron as straw

and bronze as rotten wood.

28Arrows do not make it flee;

slingstones become like chaff to it.

29A club is counted as a piece of straw;

it laughs at the rattling of the lance.

30Its underparts are the sharp points of potsherds,

it leaves its mark in the mud

like a threshing sledge.

31It makes the deep boil like a cauldron

and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment,

32It leaves a glistening wake behind it;

one would think the deep had a head of white hair.

33The likes of it is not on earth,

a creature without fear.

34It looks on every haughty being;

it is king over all that are proud.”

Job 40
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