Job
41 Will you pull Leviathan about with a fishhook
and press its tongue down with a line?
2 Will you run a rush through its nose
and punch its gills with a thorn?
3 Will it give you profuse appeals for grace,
or speak submissively to you?
4 Will it make terms with you
and you take it as permanent slave?
5 Will you play with it as you would with a bird
and tie it up for your girls,
6 Cooperators bargain over it,
divide it between dealers?
7 Will you fill its skin with darts,
its head with fish-harpoons?
8 Lay your hand on it, think of fighting—
do not try it again.
10 He is not fierce enough to rouse it—
and who will stand his ground before me?
12 I will not be silent as to its members,
and the matter of powerfulness, and the symmetry of its build.
18 Its sneezing sends beams of light
and its eyes are like the eyelashes of the dawn;
19 Out of its mouth fly torches,
sparks of fire escape;
21 Its breath sets coals ablaze,
and a flame comes out of its mouth.
22 Force lodges on its neck
and despair bounds before it.
26* One who hits it with a sword finds that that does not bite,
a spear nor a bolt nor a mail-piercer.
27 It thinks iron is threshed straw
and bronze rotten wood.
28 A shaft from a bow will not put it to flight;
stones from a sling turn to straw for it.
30 Under it are sharp chips of crockery;
it runs a toothed plank over mud.
31 It makes ooze boil up like a pot,
makes sea like a perfumer’s saucepan.
33 Over the earth there is nothing that masters it,
it that is made to be without dismay.