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19 Out of its mouth go flames,[a]
sparks of fire shoot forth!
20 Smoke streams from its nostrils
as from a boiling pot over burning[b] rushes.
21 Its breath sets coals ablaze
and a flame shoots from its mouth.

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Footnotes

  1. Job 41:19 sn For the animal, the image is that of pent-up breath with water in a hot steam jet coming from its mouth, like a stream of fire in the rays of the sun. The language is hyperbolic, probably to reflect the pagan ideas of the dragon of the deep in a polemical way—they feared it as a fire breathing monster, but in reality it might have been a steamy crocodile.
  2. Job 41:20 tn The word “burning” is supplied. The Syriac and Vulgate have “a seething and boiling pot” (reading אֹגֵם [ʾogem] for אַגְמֹן [ʾagmon]). This view is widely accepted.