Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on Job 41:1
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
1 Dost thou draw the crocodile by a hoop-net, And dost thou sink his tongue into the line?! 2 Canst thou put a rush-ring into his nose, And pierce his cheeks with a hook? 3 Will he make many supplications to thee, Or speak flatteries to thee? 4 Will he make a covenant with thee, To take him as a perpetual slave? 5 Wilt thou play with him as a little bird, And bind him for thy maidens? In Job 3:8, לויתן signified the celestial dragon, that causes the eclipses of the sun (according to the Indian mythology, râhu the black serpent, and ketu the red serpent); in Psa 104:26 it does not denote some great sea-saurian after the kind of the hydrarchus of the primeval world, (Note: Vid., Grsse, Beitrge, S. 94ff.) but directly the whale, as in the Talmud (Lewysohn, Zoologie des Talm. 178f.). Elsewhere, however, the crocodile is thus named, and in fact as תּנּין also, another appellation of this natural wonder of Egypt, as an emblem of the mightiness of Pharaoh (vid., on Psa 74:13.), as once again the crocodile itself is called in Arab. el-fir‛annu. The Old Testament language possesses no proper name for the crocodile; even the Talmudic makes use of קרוקתא = κροκόδειλος (Lewysohn, 271). לויתן is the generic name of twisted, and תנין long-extended monsters. Since the Egyptian name of the crocodile has not been Hebraized, the poet contents himself in תּמשׁך with making a play upon its Egyptian, and in Arab. tmsâḥ, timsâḥ, (Note: Herodotus was acquainted with this name (χάμψαι = κροκόδειλοι); thus is the crocodile called also in Palestine, where (as Tobler and Joh. Roth have shown) it occurs, especially in the river Damr near Tantra.) Arabized name (Ew. 324, a). To wit, it is called in Coptic temsah, Hierogl. (without the art.) msuh (emsuh), as an animal that creeps "out of the egg (suh)." (Note: Les naturalistes - says Chabas in his Papyr. magique, p. 190 - comptent cinq espces de crocodiles vivant dans le Nil, mais les hieroglyphes rapportent un plus grand nombre de noms dtermins par le signe du crocodile. Such is really the case, apart from the so-called land crocodile or σκίγκος (Arab. isqanqûr), the Coptic name of which, hankelf (according to Lauth ha. n. kelf, ruler of the bank), is not as yet indicated on the monuments. Among the many old Egyptian names for the crocodile, Kircher's charuki is, however, not found, which reminds one of the Coptic karus, as κροκόδειλος of κρόκος, for κροκόδειλος is the proper name of the Lacerta viridis (Herod. ii. 69). Lauth is inclined to regard charuki as a fiction of Kircher, as also the name of the phoenix, αλλοη (vid., p. 562). The number of names of the crocodile which remain even without charuki, leads one to infer a great variety of species, and crocodiles, which differ from all living species, have also actually been found in Egyptian tombs; vid., Schmarda, Verbreitung der Thiere, i. 89.) In Job 41:1, Ges. and others falsely translate: Canst thou press its tongue down with a cord; השׁקיע does not signify demergere = deprimere, but immergere: canst thou sink its tongue into the line, i.e., make it bite into the hook on the line, and canst thou thus draw it up? Job 41:1 then refers to what must happen in order that the משׁך of the msuh may take place. Herodotus (and after him Aristotle) says, indeed, ii. 68, the crocodile has no tongue; but it has one, only it cannot stretch it out, because the protruding part has grown to the bottom of the mouth, while otherwise the saurians have a long ton…
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