Job 41:3-5

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Job 41:3 tn The line asks if the animal, when caught and tied and under control, would keep on begging for mercy. Absolutely not. It is not in the nature of the beast. The construction uses יַרְבֶּה (yarbeh, “[will] he multiply” [= “make numerous”]), with the object, “supplications” i.e., prayers for mercy.
2. Job 41:3 tn The rhetorical question again affirms the opposite. The poem is portraying the creature as powerful and insensitive.
3. Job 41:4 tn Heb “will he cut a covenant.”
4. Job 41:4 tn The imperfect verb serves to express what the covenant pact would cover, namely, “that you take.”
5. Job 41:5 tn The Hebrew verb is שָׂחַק (sakhaq, “to sport; to trifle; to play,” Ps 104:26).
6. Job 41:5 tn The idea may include putting Leviathan on a leash. D. W. Thomas suggested on the basis of an Arabic cognate that it could be rendered “tie him with a string like a young sparrow” (“Job XL 29b: Text and Translation,” VT 14 [1964]: 114-16).