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Job

About this book
Chapter 41

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

Texts in conversation

Compare KTU 1.5 I:1 and Job 41:5

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Job 41 turns the Leviathan known as Baal's enemy in the Baal Cycle into a creature under God's control, shifting the point from a god's dangerous battle to the limits of human power.

Passages

KTU 1.5 I:1

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Though you struck Litan the wriggling serpent, finished off the writhing serpent, Encircler-with-seven-heads, the skies will be hot, they will shine when I tear you in pieces: I shall devour you, elbows, blood and forearms; You will indeed go down into the throat of divine Mot (death), into the maw of the Beloved of El, the hero. The gods departed and did not stay. Then they set their faces towards the lord of the heights of Sapan, and Gupan and Ugar said: Message of divine Mot (death), word of the Beloved of El, the hero: My appetite is the appetite of the lion in the wasteland as the desire of the shark is in the sea; as wild bulls yearn for pools, or the hind longs for the spring. Look, in truth does my throat devour clay and with both my hands I devour them.
1350–1185 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in KTU

Job 41:5

Hebrew Bible
1 “Can you pull in Leviathan with a hook and tie down its tongue with a rope? 2 Can you put a cord through its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook? 3 Will it make numerous supplications to you; will it speak to you with tender words? 4 Will it make a pact with you, so you could take it as your slave for life? 5 Can you play with it, like a bird, or tie it on a leash for your girls? 6 Will partners bargain for it? Will they divide it up among the merchants? 7 Can you fill its hide with harpoons or its head with fishing spears? 8 If you lay your hand on it, you will remember the fight. Do not do it again! 9 (41:1) See, his expectation is wrong; he is laid low even at the sight of it.
500–401 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Job

References

“... Third, biblical texts attest to the cosmic forces as the chief-god’s domesticated beasts. The book of Job knows these cosmic enemies both as human foes and divine playthings. So Job himself expresses the understanding of these figures as hostile powers, when he complains against God: “Am I Sea or Tannin that You set a watch over me?” (Job 7:12; see the reference to Leviathan in Job 3:8 and the mention of the Sea and the serpent in 26:13). Yet the book of Job later declaws these enemies by rendering them not as Yahweh’s enemies but as objects of divine domestication. So God responds to Job that he treated Sea at creation not as an enemy but as a new-born babe (Job 38:8–11). Leviathan is the sea creature caught by God’s “fishhook” (40:25, NJPS), drawn by a rope and nose-ring. God asks Job: “Will you play with him like a bird . . . ?” (40:29). Psalm 104:26 similarily identifies this figure as a creature made for play: “Leviathan whom you formed to sport with.” This view of Leviathan as a tamed pet may counter the expectation of an Israelite ...”
Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 36.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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KTU 1.5 I:1 and Job 41:5

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