Leviathan Does Not Become a Household Pet

Hebrew Bibles begin this chapter eight verses later; there these first eight lines close chapter 40, so the two creatures sit in one chapter. “His tongue with a cord” pictures a line pressing down the tongue or jaw of a hooked fish, the ordinary angler’s trick applied to something that is plainly not ordinary.

“Hook” here is agmon, literally a rush: a cord of twisted reeds threaded through the gills or jaw, used by Nile fishermen to keep a catch alive in the water. The “thorn” is a hook or clasp. The equipment gets smaller as the thing to be caught gets larger.

“Supplications” is the Hebrew word for pleas for mercy. In 19:16 Job complained, “I called my servant, and he gave me no answer; I intreated him with my mouth.” He has had to beg his own household; the question is whether this creature will beg him.

“A servant for ever” is the exact phrase of the law for a slave who chooses lifelong service and has his ear bored at the doorpost (Deuteronomy 15:17). The picture is of leviathan standing at Job’s door, signing on for life.

Small birds kept on a string as children’s pets are known from the ancient world. The word “maidens” means young girls. The question pictures a sea monster tethered in the courtyard for Job’s daughters to amuse themselves with.

“Companions” are partners in a trade, a guild of fishermen. “Merchants” is literally Canaanites, because the Canaanite and Phoenician coast supplied the ancient world’s traders; Proverbs 31:24 uses the word the same way. Leviathan is priced by the pound and sold along the coast.

Both weapons are rare words. The “barbed irons” are harpoons, a term found only here, and the “fish spears” are named with a word that seems to imitate the whirr of a thrown shaft. The skin is imagined as a pincushion, and the question expects it would not take a single point.

The only command in the chapter’s opening run of questions, and it is three clipped clauses. The Hebrew of the last is “thou wilt not do it again”: one touch, one fight, and nobody needs telling twice.

In Hebrew Bibles this line opens chapter 41. The “hope” is the hunter’s expectation of a catch, and it is disappointed before a hand is lifted: the would-be captor is laid flat by the sight of the creature coming up out of the water.

“Stir up” is the verb of 3:8, where the Hebrew curses Job’s birthday by those “ready to rouse leviathan”; the King James there reads “raise up their mourning”. Job summoned such people to his aid. Now nobody dares. The question turns abruptly from the creature to its Maker: who can stand before me?

Paul quotes this line in Romans 11:35, “who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?” “Under the whole heaven” echoes 28:24 and 37:3, where God sees and directs everything under it. What he sees and directs, he owns.

The voice announces its theme like a singer: I will not be silent about his limbs, his might, the grace of his build. “Comely proportion” translates a phrase whose first word appears nowhere else, meaning grace or charm. The LORD speaks of this creature with evident pleasure.

To “discover the face of his garment” is to strip off his outer covering, the hide. The “double bridle” is the doubled jaw where a bridle would go. The ancient Greek translation read “breastplate” instead, a different word with nearly the same letters.

The jaws are pictured as double doors, the face as a gatehouse. A crocodile’s teeth show all round its mouth even when it is shut, which is one reason that animal is the reading most often proposed for this chapter.

The Hebrew runs, “a pride are the channels of shields”: the scales are rows of shields laid edge to edge. The ancient Greek read “his back” for “his pride”, a one-letter difference. “Pride” here prepares for the last line of the chapter.

“Air” is ruach, the word for wind and spirit. The wind that brought down the house on Job’s children (1:19) could not find a gap between these scales.

“Joined one to another” is in Hebrew “a man to his brother”, an idiom for things set side by side. The scales hold together as close as brothers should; Job said of his own, “He hath put my brethren far from me” (19:13).

“Neesings” is the 1611 spelling of sneezings; a snorting beast blows spray that catches the sun. “The eyelids of the morning” is the phrase of 3:9, where Job cursed his birth night, “neither let it see the dawning of the day”, literally the eyelids of the dawn. The dawn he wished away shines in this creature’s eyes.

“Burning lamps” are torches, the word used of the lamps Gideon’s men hid in their pitchers (Judges 7:16). “Sparks of fire” uses a word found only here. The poem stacks fire words the way the previous verses stacked armour words.

The word for “caldron” is agmon, the rush of verse 2. Twisted, it made the cord meant to hold leviathan; here it is the reeds burning under a boiling pot. The humble fishing tackle has become kindling.

“Breath” is nephesh, usually life or soul, used here in its root sense of breath from the throat. Coal, flame and mouth close the fire sequence begun in verse 18 with a creature that kindles a fire just by breathing on it.

The Hebrew is more vivid than the King James: “before him dances dismay”. Terror runs ahead of him like a herald. The 1611 translators read the rare word for dismay differently and took the line as sorrow giving way to joy.

“Flakes of his flesh” are the folds or dewlaps, the loose flesh under the belly that on most animals sags. On this one they are “firm in themselves”, a word used of metal poured and cast solid.

The nether millstone was the lower of the two, fixed in place and cut from the hardest stone, since the upper one was turned against it all day. “Heart” means the chest, the core of the body. Deuteronomy 24:6 forbids taking a millstone in pledge because a household lived by it.

“When he raiseth up himself” uses the word Job threw at his friends in 13:11, “Shall not his excellency make you afraid?” The “mighty” may mean the gods, the same word as Exodus 15:11. “Purify themselves” renders a verb whose root means to miss the mark; many read it as losing their bearings in panic.

A habergeon was a short, sleeveless coat of mail, lighter than a full hauberk. The list covers the whole armoury, from the sword at close quarters to the spear, the thrown dart and the mail that ought to keep the wearer alive.

In 40:18 behemoth’s bones were like brass and iron, and those metals were the measure of strength. Here the same two metals are straw and rotten wood. The scale of comparison has been raised again.

“The arrow” is in Hebrew “the son of the bow”. Job 5:7 used the same idiom when Eliphaz said the sparks fly upward, literally sons of flame. Slingstones, the weapon David used against a giant, turn to chaff before him.

“Laugheth” is the verb of the wild ass in 39:7 and the warhorse in 39:22. The “spear” is the javelin, the kidon, which rattled above the warhorse in 39:23 while it laughed at fear. The horse laughed amid the weapon; this creature laughs at it.

“Sharp stones” is literally the sharpest potsherds, the underside scales, which leave marks on the mud like a threshing sledge. Potsherd is the word of 2:8, where Job took one “to scrape himself withal”. What Job used on his own skin is what leviathan is plated with.

The “pot of ointment” is a perfumer’s mixing pot, stirred until it foams, the word used of compounding the holy anointing oil in Exodus 30:25. The sea churns in his passage like a mixture being beaten.

“Hoary” means grey-headed. The foam of his wake lies on the water like white hair on an old man, the image Proverbs 16:31 calls a crown of glory. The word “deep” is tehom, the primeval waters of Genesis 1:2.

“Upon earth there is not his like” echoes the LORD’s words about Job in 1:8 and 2:3, “there is none like him in the earth.” The Hebrew says “upon the dust”, and “made without fear” means created to be fearless, the one creature with nothing to be afraid of.

“Children of pride” is the phrase of 28:8, where the King James renders it “the lion’s whelps”: the proud beasts, the great predators. It is the last line the LORD speaks from the storm, and it leaves the title of king with a creature, not with Job.