Joseph Benson’s Bible Commentary
Job 41:27-28
He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood He neither fears, nor feels, the blows of the one more than of the other. The arrow cannot make him flee Hebrew, the son of the bow, as it is elsewhere called, the son of the quiver, Lamentations 3:13; the quiver being, as it were, the mother, or womb, that bears it, and the bow as the father that begets it, or sendeth it forth. Sling-stones Great stones cast out of slings, which have a great force and efficacy, 2 Chronicles 26:14; are turned with him into stubble Hurt him no more than a blow with a little stubble. Heath renders this clause, He throweth about sling-stones like stubble; and Houbigant, Sling-stones are no more to him than stubble. An extraordinary instance of the strength of a crocodile is related by Maillet. “I saw one,” says he, “twelve feet long, which had not eaten any thing for thirty-five days, having had its mouth tied close during that interval, which, from a single blow from its tail, overturned five or six men together, with a bale of coffee, as easily as I could overturn six men at a game of draughts.” What force then must one of twenty feet long have in its full strength, and not weakened by such a fast? Thevenot also speaks of one that he had stripped of his skin, and says, that “it was so strong, though but eight feet in length, that after they had turned him upon his back, and four persons stood upon him with both their feet, while they were cutting open his belly, he moved himself with so much force as to throw them off with violence.” See Maillet's Description of Egypt, page 33, and Thevenot, part 2. page 72.