Can You Draw Out Leviathan?

1“[†]Can you draw out [†]Leviathan with a fishhook?

Or press down its tongue with a cord?

2Can you put a [†]rope in its nose

Or pierce its jaw with a [†]hook?

3Will it make many supplications to you,

Or will he speak to you soft words?

4Will it cut a covenant with you?

Will you take it for a slave forever?

5Will you play with it as with a bird,

Or will you bind it for your young women?

6Will the [†]traders bargain over it?

Will they divide it among the merchants?

7Can you fill its skin with harpoons,

Or its head with fishing spears?

8Place your hand on it;

Remember the battle; [†]you will not do that again!

9[†]Behold, [†]his expectation is a lie;

Will [†]he be laid low even at the sight of it?

10No one is so fierce that he dares to arouse it;

Who then is he that can stand before Me?

11Who has [†]given to Me that I should repay him?

Whatever is under the whole heaven is Mine.

12“I will not keep silence concerning its limbs,

Or its mighty strength or its graceful frame.

13Who can [†]strip off its [†]outer armor?

Who can come with its doubled [†]bridle?

14Who can open the doors of its face?

Around its teeth there is dreadful terror.

15Its [†]strong scales are its pride,

Shut up as with a tight seal.

16One is so near to another

That no air can come between them.

17They cling one to another;

They are interlocked and cannot be separated.

18Its sneezes flash forth light,

And its eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.

19Out of its mouth go burning torches;

Sparks of fire [†]leap forth.

20Out of its nostrils smoke goes forth

As from a boiling pot and burning reeds.

21Its breath kindles coals,

And a flame goes forth from its mouth.

22In its neck lodges strength,

And dismay leaps before it.

23The folds of its flesh cling together,

Hardened upon it and is not shaken.

24Its heart is as hard as a stone,

Even as hard as a lower millstone.

25When it raises itself up, the [†]mighty fear,

Because of the crashing they are [†]bewildered.

26The sword that reaches it cannot avail,

Nor the spear, the dart, or the javelin.

27It regards iron as straw,

Bronze as rotten wood.

28The [†]arrow cannot make it flee;

Slingstones are turned into stubble for it.

29Clubs are regarded as stubble;

It laughs at the rattling of the javelin.

30Its underparts are like sharp potsherds;

It [†]spreads out like a threshing sledge on the mire.

31It makes the depths boil like a pot;

It makes the sea like a jar of ointment.

32Behind it, it makes a wake to shine;

One would think the deep to be gray-haired.

33There is nothing upon the [†]dust like it,

One made without terror.

34[†]It looks on everything that is high;

It is king over all the sons of pride.”