Attributed commentary excerpt
John Gill's Exposition on Job 40:18
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Exposition of the Old and New Testament
John Gill (1697–1771) · 18th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
His bones [are as] strong pieces of brass: his bones [are] as bars of iron.] Than which nothing is stronger. The repetition is made for greater illustration and confirmation; but what is said is not applicable to the elephant, whose bones are porous and rimous, light and spongy for the most part, as appears from the osteology f1475 of it; excepting its teeth, which are the ivory; though the teeth of the river horse are said to exceed them in hardness f1476; and artificers say f1477 they are wrought with greater difficulty than ivory. The ancients, according to Pausanias f1478, used them instead of it; who relates, that the face of the image of the goddess Cybele was made of them: and Kircher f1479 says, in India they make beads, crucifixes, and statues of saints of them; and that they are as hard or harder than a flint, and fire may be struck out of them. So the teeth of the morss, a creature of the like kind in the northern countries, are valued by the inhabitants as ivory f1480, for hardness, whiteness, and weight, beyond it, and are dearer and much traded in; (see Gill on “<184020>Job 40:20”); but no doubt not the teeth only, but the other bones of the creature in the text are meant.
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