YHWH and the Leviathan

¹“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fish hook,[#41:1 Leviathan is a name for a crocodile or similar creature.]

or press down its tongue with a cord?

²Can you put a rope into its nose,

or pierce its jaw through with a hook?

³Will it make many petitions to you,

or will it speak soft words to you?

⁴Will it make a covenant with you,

that you should take it for a servant forever?

⁵Will you play with it as with a bird?

Or will you bind it for your girls?

⁶Will traders barter for it?

Will they divide it among the merchants?

⁷Can you fill its skin with barbed irons,

or its head with fish spears?

⁸Lay your hand on it.

Remember the battle, and do so no more.

⁹Look, the hoping to catch it is vain.

Won’t one be cast down even at the sight of it?

¹⁰None is so fierce that he dare arouse it.

Who then can stand before me?

¹¹Who has first given to me, that I should repay him?

Everything under the heavens is mine.

¹²“I will not keep silence concerning his limbs,

nor his mighty strength, nor his graceful frame.

¹³Who can strip off its outer garment?

Who will come within its jaws?

¹⁴Who can open the doors of its mouth?

Around its teeth is terror.

¹⁵Strong scales are his pride,

shut up together with a close seal.

¹⁶One is so near to another,

that no air can come between them.

¹⁷They are joined to one another.

They stick together, so that they can’t be pulled apart.

¹⁸Its snorting throws out flashes of light.

Its eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.

¹⁹Out of its mouth go burning torches.

Sparks of fire leap out.

²⁰Out of its nostrils a smoke goes,

as of a boiling pot over a fire of reeds.

²¹Its breath kindles coals.

A flame goes out of its mouth.

²²There is strength in its neck.

Terror dances before it.

²³The flakes of its flesh are joined together.

They are firm on it.

They can’t be moved.

²⁴Its heart is as firm as a stone,

yes, firm as the lower millstone.

²⁵When it raises itself up, the mighty are afraid.

They retreat before its thrashing.

²⁶If one attacks it with the sword, it won’t have effect;

nor the spear, the dart, nor the pointed shaft.

²⁷It counts iron as straw,

and bronze as rotten wood.

²⁸The arrow can’t make it flee.

Sling stones are like chaff to it.

²⁹Clubs are counted as stubble.

It laughs at the rushing of the javelin.

³⁰Its underside is like sharp potsherds,

leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge.

³¹It makes the deep to boil like a pot.

It makes the sea like a pot of ointment.

³²It makes a path shine behind it.

One would think the deep had white hair.

³³On earth there is not its equal,

that is made without fear.

³⁴It sees everything that is high.

It is king over all the sons of pride.”