Job 41

¹² "I will not fail to speak of his limbs,
his strength and his graceful form.

¹³ Who can strip off his outer coat?
Who would approach him with a bridle?

¹⁴ Who dares open the doors of his mouth,
ringed about with his fearsome teeth?

¹⁵ His back has rows of shields
tightly sealed together;

¹⁶ each is so close to the next
that no air can pass between.

¹⁷ They are joined fast to one another;
they cling together and cannot be parted.

¹⁸ His snorting throws out flashes of light;
his eyes are like the rays of dawn.

¹⁹ Firebrands stream from his mouth;
sparks of fire shoot out.

²⁰ Smoke pours from his nostrils
as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds.

²¹ His breath sets coals ablaze,
and flames dart from his mouth.

²² Strength resides in his neck;
dismay goes before him.

²³ The folds of his flesh are tightly joined;
they are firm and immovable.

²⁴ His chest is hard as rock,
hard as a lower millstone.

²⁵ When he rises up, the mighty are terrified;
they retreat before his thrashing.

²⁶ The sword that reaches him has no effect,
nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.

²⁷ Iron he treats like straw
and bronze like rotten wood.

²⁸ Arrows do not make him flee;
slingstones are like chaff to him.

²⁹ A club seems to him but a piece of straw;
he laughs at the rattling of the lance.

³⁰ His undersides are jagged potsherds,
leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge.

³¹ He makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron
and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.

³² Behind him he leaves a glistening wake;
one would think the deep had white hair.

³³ Nothing on earth is his equal—
a creature without fear.

³⁴ He looks down on all that are haughty;
he is king over all that are proud."

I don't know about you, but that sounds an awful lot like a dragon to me =) I don't know of any other animal that has fire shooting out of his mouth! Kelsi and I have been reading a series called Dragons in Our Midst, it's a Christian fiction fantasy series geared toward pre-teens. Yes, I'm reading the same books as my daughter. Don't judge me. I mean, really...there are dragons, King Aurthur legends, and sword fighting, what more could you ask for? And actually, they are really good books without all the allegory stuff that's usually in Christian fantasy books. In the books, this chapter in Job is referred to several times. As sad as it is to admit, I didn't really know much about this chapter. I had of course heard of the leviathan, but not much. So I decided to investigate further. I was reading it aloud to Daniel yesterday (I knew he'd think it was as cool as I did!) and Kelsi listened in. When I got to the fire breathing part she suddenly asked if it was talking about a dragon. Then when she found out I was reading from the Bible (I was using my Kindle app so she couldn't tell) she got so excited! It sparked an hour (or close to) long discussion about the leviathan, the behemoth (sounds kinda like a dinosaur), the flood, the Tower of Babel...all sorts of things! It was really cool to see Kelsi so excited about learning what the Bible had to say and asking all sorts of questions.