Job41

¹“Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope?

²Can you put a cord through its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook?

³Will it keep begging you for mercy? Will it speak to you with gentle words?

⁴Will it make an agreement with you for you to take it as your slave for life?

⁵Can you make a pet of it like a bird or put it on a leash for the young women in your house?

⁶Will traders barter 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 a hand on it, you will remember the struggle and never do it again!

⁹Any hope of subduing it is false; the mere sight of it is overpowering.

¹⁰No one is fierce enough to rouse it. Who then is able to stand against me?

¹¹Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.

¹²“I will not fail to speak of Leviathan’s limbs, its strength and its graceful form.

¹³Who can strip off its outer coat? Who can penetrate its double coat of armor?

¹⁴Who dares open the doors of its mouth, ringed about with fearsome teeth?

¹⁵Its back has rows of shields tightly sealed together;

¹⁶each is so close to the next that no air can pass between.

¹⁷They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted.

¹⁸Its snorting throws out flashes of light; its eyes are like the rays of dawn.

¹⁹Flames stream from its mouth; sparks of fire shoot out.

²⁰Smoke pours from its nostrils as from a boiling pot over burning reeds.

²¹Its breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from its mouth.

²²Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it.

²³The folds of its flesh are tightly joined; they are firm and immovable.

²⁴Its chest is hard as rock, hard as a lower millstone.

²⁵When it rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before its thrashing.

²⁶The sword that reaches it has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.

²⁷Iron it treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood.

²⁸Arrows do not make it flee; slingstones are like chaff to it.

²⁹A club seems to it but a piece of straw; it laughs at the rattling of the lance.

³⁰Its undersides are jagged potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge.

³¹It makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.

³²It leaves a glistening wake behind it; one would think the deep had white hair.

³³Nothing on earth is its equal— a creature without fear.

³⁴It looks down on all that are haughty; it is king over all that are proud.”