Job 40:24

24. He taketh it with his eyes Before his eyes do they take him: literally, in his eyes, one takes him. So Ewald, Conant, Hitzig, etc. The sluggish, peaceable disposition of this beast (Job 40:20-21) exposes him to easy capture. With the same indifference with which he floated with the floods he surveys preparations made for his capture before his very eyes. Immense powers of resistance is he endowed with; but these, owing to the sluggishness of his nature, lie in abeyance.

His nose pierceth through snares His nose is pierced with snares; or, as Gesenius and Furst express it, “with hooks;” literally, one pierces the nose with hooks. The sense, therefore, is similar to that of 2 Kings 19:28, where Jehovah threatens Sennacherib, “I will put my hook in thy nose.” This interpretation is also that of the Septuagint, “In his sight, one shall take him; he shall catch him with a cord and pierce his nose.” In like manner, the Chaldee and Vulgate versions. Others (Rosenmuller, Hirtzel, Welte) read the verse as an ironical challenge, “Just catch him while he is looking, with snares let one pierce his nose,” (Delitzsch:) while others regard the passage as an interrogation, denoting the extreme difficulty of taking the animal. The older commentators were partly induced to take such a view of this verse, from the supposition that the beast is bellicose and difficult of capture, which is really the case only in exceptional instances, such as those produced by Ruppell ( Reisen in Nubien, 52, seq.) and Sir Samuel Baker, ( Ismalia, 37, 120;) and more specifically when the mother is robbed of her young, as in Livingstone. Ibid., p. 537. (See Job 40:20.) The latter case of offensive warfare is so unusual an occurrence, says Livingstone, that his men, when once attacked by a hippopotamus, exclaimed ‘Is the beast mad?’ Stickel, (p. 219, 220,) shows satisfactorily and at large, that neither the interrogative nor the ironical rendering of the passage is justified by the usage of Job, or by the laws of the language. In illustration of the A.V., it may be proper to cite Wood ( Bible Animals, p. 327,) who says, “This faculty of detecting snares, is one of the chief characteristics of the hippopotamus, when it lives near places inhabited by mankind, who are always doing their best to destroy it.” Oddly enough, Pliny remarks of the animal, that “it enters the field backwards, to prevent any ambush being laid for it on its return.” Nat. Hist., Job 8:39. The monuments of Egypt leave us little doubt, but that this animal was easily taken in ancient times. Wilkinson thus describes the accompanying engraving: “The chasseur is here in the act of throwing the spear at the hippopotamus, which he has already wounded by three other blades, indicated by the ropes in his left hand; and having pulled the animal towards the surface of the water, an attendant endeavors to throw a noose over its head, as he strikes it for a fourth time. Behind him is his son, holding a fresh spear in readiness; and in order that there should be no question about the ropes belonging to the blades, the fourth is seen to extend from his hand to the shaft of the spear he is throwing.” See Ancient Egyptians, 3:68-71.