“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook?
Can you press down its tongue with a cord?
Can you put a rope in its nose?
Can you pierce its jaw with a hook?”
In the Bible of Jerusalem this is the end of chapter 40 and not the beginning of chapter 41. However, the text is exactly the same so I am using the Oxford Bible numbering until the end of chapter 41, where the 2 works once again coincide. The Leviathan was the sea monster personified. If anything it might have been a large crocodile or a water dragon of some kind. Later in medieval Christianity, the Leviathan was considered to be the devil in popular works. For philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) the Leviathan was a big government that came from a social contract. You obviously could not catch this monster with a fish hook, a cord, or a rope. This biblical author spends a long time explaining the Leviathan in this part of Yahweh’s speech.
Eugene Finnegan Bible Project 