Job 41: Yahweh describes Leviathan

In plain English: Can you draw out Leviathan with a fish hook, or press down his tongue with a cord?

The Hebrew word: "Leviathan" is Livyatan. It is in 5 verses of the Bible: Job 3:8, this verse, Psalm 74:14, Psalm 104:26 and Isaiah 27:1. Each of those verses says something of its own about Leviathan.

Church tradition: Interpreters have identified Leviathan in different ways: as an animal, as a creature of story, or as something else. The text of Job names none of them. It describes Leviathan, as Yahweh's speech does here.

In plain English: Can you put a rope into his nose, or pierce his jaw through with a hook?

In plain English: Will he make many petitions (or: pleas) to you, or will he speak soft words to you?

In plain English: Will he make a covenant with you, that you should take him for a servant (or: slave) forever?

In plain English: Will you play with him as with a bird? Or will you tie him up for your girls?

In plain English: Will traders (or: partners) barter for him? Will they divide him up among the merchants (or: Canaanites)?

In plain English: Can you fill his skin with barbed irons, or his head with fish spears?

In plain English: Lay your hand on him. Remember the battle, and do not do it again.

In plain English: Look, the hope of him is in vain. Won't anyone be thrown down even at the sight of him?

In plain English: No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up. Who then is he who can stand before me?

In plain English: Who has first given to me, that I should repay him? Everything under the heavens is mine.

In plain English: I will not keep silent about his limbs, his mighty strength, or the grace of his frame (the Hebrew says: the grace of his arrangement).

The Hebrew words: The first word of the verse is written in the Hebrew with the letters for "not", and the WEB follows that: "I will not keep silence". The word-by-word meaning in the data gives "to it" instead, a word that sounds the same. "Goodly frame" is word by word "the grace of its arrangement".

What changes: With "not", Yahweh says he will not keep silent about Leviathan's limbs, strength and frame. With "to it" the opening reads differently. The text does not say which is meant.

In plain English: Who can strip off his outer garment? Who can come within his jaws (the Hebrew says: the doubling of his halter)?

In plain English: Who can open the doors of his face? Around his teeth is terror.

In plain English: His pride is his strong scales (the Hebrew says: rows of shields), shut up together with a tight seal.

In plain English: One is so near to another that no air (or: breath) can come between them.

In plain English: They are joined to one another (the Hebrew says: each to his brother). They stick together, so that they cannot be pulled apart.

In plain English: His sneezing flashes out light. His eyes are like the eyelids of the morning (or: dawn).

In plain English: Out of his mouth go burning torches. Sparks of fire leap out.

In plain English: Out of his nostrils a smoke goes, like a boiling pot over a fire of reeds.

In plain English: His breath kindles coals. A flame goes out of his mouth.

In plain English: There is strength in his neck. Terror (or: dismay) dances before him.

In plain English: The flakes of his flesh are joined together. They are firm on him. They cannot be moved.

In plain English: His heart is as firm as a stone, yes, as firm as the lower millstone.

In plain English: When he raises himself up, the mighty are afraid. They retreat (or: are bewildered) before his thrashing (or: crashing).

The Hebrew words: "The mighty" is elim, from el, which the dictionary gives as "strength", "mighty" and "the Almighty", and also says is used of any deity. It is in 56 verses of Job, and the WEB says "God" in 55 of them. Here it says "mighty". "Retreat" is chata, which the dictionary gives as "properly, to miss; hence (figuratively and generally) to sin". It is in 12 verses of Job, and the WEB says "sin" ("sinned", "sins") in 10 of them and "retreat" in this one.

What changes: The WEB reads that the mighty retreat. Word by word the Hebrew reads "they are bewildered", and the base meaning of the word is "to miss". The text does not say which is meant.

In plain English: If one attacks him with the sword, it cannot prevail. Neither can the spear, the dart or the pointed shaft.

In plain English: He counts iron as straw, and bronze as rotten wood.

In plain English: The arrow (the Hebrew says: the son of a bow) cannot make him flee. Sling stones are turned into chaff for him.

In plain English: Clubs are counted as stubble. He laughs at the rushing of the javelin.

In plain English: His undersides are like sharp pieces of broken pots. He spreads himself on the mud like a threshing sledge (or: leaves a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge).

In plain English: He makes the deep boil like a pot. He makes the sea like a pot of ointment.

In plain English: He makes a path shine after him. One would think the deep had white hair.

In plain English: On earth (the Hebrew says: on the dust) there is not his equal, he who is made without fear.

In plain English: He sees everything that is high. He is king over all the sons of pride.

The Hebrew words: "Pride" is shachats, which the dictionary gives as "haughtiness (as evinced by the attitude)". It is in 2 verses of the Bible, this one and Job 28:8. In both the Hebrew says "sons of pride". The WEB says "proud animals" in Job 28:8 and "sons of pride" here. The text does not say who the sons of pride are.