Job 40:19 - Exposition

He is the chief of the ways of God . This is the main argument in favour of the elephant, rather than the hippopotamus, being intended (see Schultens, ad loc .). It has, indeed, been argued that some specimens of the hippopotamus exceed the elephant in height and bulk; but no modern naturalist certainly would place the former animal above the latter in any catalogue raisonée of animals arranged according to their size and importance. The elephant, however, may not have been known to the author of Job, or, at any rate, the Asiatic species, which seems not to have been imported into Assyria before the middle of the ninth century b.c. In this case, the hippopotamus might well seem to him the grandest of the works of God. He that made him can make his sword to approach unto him . This is explained to mean, "Only God can attack behemoth with success and slay him; man is powerless to do so" (Canon Cook, Stanley Leathes, Revised Version). But the Egyptians, from very early times, used to attack the hippopotamus and slay him. It is better, therefore, to translate the passage, with Schultens, "He that made him hath furnished him with his sword," and to understand by "his sword" those sharp teeth with which the hippopotamus is said to "cut the grass as neatly as if it were mown ' and to sever, as if with shears ' a tolerably stout and thick stem". Compare the 'Theriaca' of Nicander, 11. 566, 567—

ἢ ἵππου τὸν νεῖλος ὑπὲρ σάΐν αἰθαλόεσσαν

βόσκει ἀρούρησιν δὲ κακὴν ἐπιβάλλεται ἅρπην