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10 Is it not fierce[a] when it is awakened?
Who is he, then, who can stand before it?[b]
11 Who has confronted[c] me that I should repay?[d]
Everything under heaven belongs to me![e]
12 I will not keep silent about its limbs,
and the extent of its might,
and the grace of its arrangement.[f]

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Footnotes

  1. Job 41:10 sn The description is of the animal, not the hunter (or fisherman). Leviathan is so fierce that no one can take him on alone.
  2. Job 41:10 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).
  3. Job 41:11 tn The verb קָדַם (qadam) means “to come to meet; to come before; to confront” to the face.
  4. Job 41:11 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.
  5. Job 41:11 tn This line also focuses on the sovereign God rather than Leviathan. H. H. Rowley, however, wants to change לִי־חוּא (li huʾ, “it [belongs] to me”) into לֹא הוּא (loʾ huʾ, “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.
  6. Job 41:12 tn Dhorme changes the noun into a verb, “I will tell,” and the last two words into אֵין עֶרֶךְ (ʾen ʿerekh, “there is no comparison”). The result is “I will tell of his incomparable might.”

10 No one is fierce enough to rouse it.(A)
    Who then is able to stand against me?(B)
11 Who has a claim against me that I must pay?(C)
    Everything under heaven belongs to me.(D)

12 “I will not fail to speak of Leviathan’s limbs,(E)
    its strength(F) and its graceful form.

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