• 1 “Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or 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 keep begging you for mercy? Will it speak to you with gentle words?
  • 4 Will it make an agreement with you for you to take it as your slave for life?
  • 5 Can you make a pet of it like a bird or put it on a leash for the young women in your house?
  • 6 Will traders barter 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 a hand on it, you will remember the struggle and never do it again!
  • 9 Any hope of subduing it is false; the mere sight of it is overpowering.
  • 10 No one is fierce enough to rouse it. Who then is able to stand against me?
  • 11 Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.
  • 12 “I will not fail to speak of Leviathan’s limbs, its strength and its graceful form.
  • 13 Who can strip off its outer coat? Who can penetrate its double coat of armor?
  • 14 Who dares open the doors of its mouth, ringed about with fearsome teeth?
  • 15 Its back has rows of shields tightly sealed together;
  • 16 each is so close to the next that no air can pass between.
  • 17 They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted.
  • 18 Its snorting throws out flashes of light; its eyes are like the rays of dawn.
  • 19 Flames stream from its mouth; sparks of fire shoot out.
  • 20 Smoke pours from its nostrils as from a boiling pot over burning reeds.
  • 21 Its breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from its mouth.
  • 22 Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it.
  • 23 The folds of its flesh are tightly joined; they are firm and immovable.
  • 24 Its chest is hard as rock, hard as a lower millstone.
  • 25 When it rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before its thrashing.
  • 26 The sword that reaches it has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.
  • 27 Iron it treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood.
  • 28 Arrows do not make it flee; slingstones are like chaff to it.
  • 29 A club seems to it but a piece of straw; it laughs at the rattling of the lance.
  • 30 Its undersides are jagged potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge.
  • 31 It makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.
  • 32 It leaves a glistening wake behind it; one would think the deep had white hair.
  • 33 Nothing on earth is its equal— a creature without fear.
  • 34 It looks down on all that are haughty; it is king over all that are proud.”