YHWH and the Leviathan

Job 41 “Can you draw out Leviathan+41:1 Leviathan is a name for a crocodile or similar creature. with a fish hook, or press down its tongue with a cord? Can you put a rope into its nose, or pierce its jaw through with a hook? Will it make many petitions to you, or will it speak soft words to you? Will it make a covenant with you, that you should take it for a servant forever? Will you play with it as with a bird? Or will you bind it for your girls? Will traders barter for it? Will they divide it among the merchants? Can you fill its skin with barbed irons, or its head with fish spears? Lay your hand on it. Remember the battle, and do so no more. Look, the hoping to catch it is vain. Won’t one be cast down even at the sight of it?

 

None is so fierce that he dare arouse it. Who then can stand before me? Who has first given to me, that I should repay him? Everything under the heavens is mine.

 

“I will not keep silence concerning his limbs, nor his mighty strength, nor his graceful frame. Who can strip off its outer garment? Who will come within its jaws? Who can open the doors of its mouth? Around its teeth is terror. Strong scales are his pride, shut up together with a close seal.

 

One is so near to another, that no air can come between them. They are joined to one another. They stick together, so that they can’t be pulled apart. Its snorting throws out flashes of light. Its eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of its mouth go burning torches. Sparks of fire leap out. Out of its nostrils a smoke goes, as of a boiling pot over a fire of reeds. Its breath kindles coals. A flame goes out of its mouth. There is strength in its neck. Terror dances before it. The flakes of its flesh are joined together. They are firm on it. They can’t be moved. Its heart is as firm as a stone, yes, firm as the lower millstone. When it raises itself up, the mighty are afraid. They retreat before its thrashing. If one attacks it with the sword, it won’t have effect; nor the spear, the dart, nor the pointed shaft. It counts iron as straw, and bronze as rotten wood. The arrow can’t make it flee. Sling stones are like chaff to it. Clubs are counted as stubble. It laughs at the rushing of the javelin. Its underside is like sharp potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge. It makes the deep to boil like a pot. It makes the sea like a pot of ointment. It makes a path shine behind it. One would think the deep had white hair. On earth there is not its equal, that is made without fear. It sees everything that is high. It is king over all the sons of pride.”