NET Bible

The Description of Leviathan

^41:1 (40:25) “Can you pull in Leviathan with a hook and tie down its tongue with a rope? ^41:2 Can you put a cord through its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook? ^41:3 Will it make numerous supplications to you; will it speak to you with tender words? ^41:4 Will it make a pact with you, so you could take it as your slave for life? ^41:5 Can you play with it, like a bird, or tie it on a leash for your girls? ^41:6 Will partners bargain for it? Will they divide it up among the merchants? ^41:7 Can you fill its hide with harpoons or its head with fishing spears? ^41:8 If you lay your hand on it, you will remember the fight. Do not do it again! ^41:9 (41:1) See, his expectation is wrong; he is laid low even at the sight of it. ^41:10 Is it not fierce when it is awakened? Who is he, then, who can stand before it? ^41:11 Who has confronted me that I should repay? Everything under heaven belongs to me! ^41:12 I will not keep silent about its limbs, and the extent of its might, and the grace of its arrangement. ^41:13 Who can uncover its outer covering? Who can penetrate to the inside of its armor? ^41:14 Who can open the doors of its mouth? Its teeth all around are fearsome. ^41:15 Its back has rows of shields, shut up closely together as with a seal; ^41:16 each one is so close to the next that no air can come between them. ^41:17 They lock tightly together, one to the next; they cling together and cannot be separated. ^41:18 Its snorting throws out flashes of light; its eyes are like the red glow of dawn. ^41:19 Out of its mouth go flames; sparks of fire shoot forth! ^41:20 Smoke streams from its nostrils as from a boiling pot over burning rushes. ^41:21 Its breath sets coals ablaze, and a flame shoots from its mouth. ^41:22 Strength lodges in its neck, and despair runs before it. ^41:23 The folds of its flesh are tightly joined; they are firm on it, immovable. ^41:24 Its heart is hard as rock, hard as a lower millstone. ^41:25 When it rises up, the mighty are terrified; at its thrashing about they withdraw. ^41:26 Whoever strikes it with a sword will have no effect, nor with the spear, arrow, or dart. ^41:27 It regards iron as straw and bronze as rotten wood. ^41:28 Arrows do not make it flee; slingstones become like chaff to it. ^41:29 A club is counted as a piece of straw; it laughs at the rattling of the lance. ^41:30 Its underparts are the sharp points of potsherds; it leaves its mark in the mud like a threshing sledge. ^41:31 It makes the deep boil like a cauldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment, ^41:32 It leaves a glistening wake behind it; one would think the deep had a head of white hair. ^41:33 The likes of it is not on earth, a creature without fear. ^41:34 It looks on every haughty being; it is king over all that are proud.”