Ayub 41:10-18

41:10 Is it not fierce ¹  when it is awakened?

Who is he, then, who can stand before it? ² 

41:11 (Who has confronted ³  me that I should repay? ⁴ 

Everything under heaven belongs to me!) ⁵ 

41:12 I will not keep silent about its limbs,

and the extent of its might,

and the grace of its arrangement. ⁶ 

41:13 Who can uncover its outer covering? ⁷ 

Who can penetrate to the inside of its armor? ⁸ 

41:14 Who can open the doors of its mouth? ⁹ 

Its teeth all around are fearsome.

41:15 Its back ¹⁰  has rows of shields,

shut up closely ¹¹  together as with a seal;

41:16 each one is so close to the next ¹² 

that no air can come between them.

41:17 They lock tightly together, one to the next; ¹³ 

they cling together and cannot be separated.

41:18 Its snorting throws out flashes of light;

its eyes are like the red glow ¹⁴  of dawn.

[41:10]  ¹ sn The description is of the animal, not the hunter (or fisherman). Leviathan is so fierce that no one can take him on alone.

[41:10]  ² tc MT has “before me” and can best be rendered as “Who then is he that can stand before me?” (ESV, NASB, NIV, NLT, NJPS). The following verse (11) favors the MT since both express the lesson to be learned from Leviathan: If a man cannot stand up to Leviathan, how can he stand up to its creator? The translation above has chosen to read the text as “before him” (cf. NRSV, NJB).

[41:11]  ³ tn The verb קָדַם (qadam) means “to come to meet; to come before; to confront” to the face.

[41:11]  ⁴ sn The verse seems an intrusion (and so E. Dhorme, H. H. Rowley, and many others change the pronouns to make it refer to the animal). But what the text is saying is that it is more dangerous to confront God than to confront this animal.

[41:11]  ⁵ tn This line also focuses on the sovereign God rather than Leviathan. H. H. Rowley, however, wants to change לִי־חוּא (li-hu’, “it [belongs] to me”) into לֹא הוּא (lo’ hu’, “there is no one”). So it would say that there is no one under the whole heaven who could challenge Leviathan and live, rather than saying it is more dangerous to challenge God to make him repay.

[41:12]  ⁶ tn Dhorme changes the noun into a verb, “I will tell,” and the last two words into אֵין עֶרֶךְ (’en ’erekh, “there is no comparison”). The result is “I will tell of his incomparable might.”

[41:13]  ⁷ tn Heb “the face of his garment,” referring to the outer garment or covering. Some take it to be the front as opposed to the back.

[41:13]  ⁸ tc The word רֶסֶן (resen) has often been rendered “bridle” (cf. ESV), but that leaves a number of unanswered questions. The LXX reads סִרְיוֹן (siryon), with the transposition of letters, but that means “coat of armor.” If the metathesis stands, there is also support from the cognate Akkadian.

[41:14]  ⁹ tn Heb “his face.”

[41:15]  ¹⁰ tc The MT has גַּאֲוָה (ga’avah, “his pride”), but the LXX, Aquila, and the Vulgate all read גַּוּוֹ (gavvo, “his back”). Almost all the modern English versions follow the variant reading, speaking about “his [or its] back.”

[41:15]  ¹¹ tn Instead of צָר (tsar, “closely”) the LXX has צֹר (tsor, “stone”) to say that the seal was rock hard.

[41:16]  ¹² tn The expression “each one…to the next” is literally “one with one.”

[41:17]  ¹³ tn Heb “a man with his brother.”

[41:18]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the eyelids,” but it represents the early beams of the dawn as the cover of night lifts.