Leviathan

Job 41 - "Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook
or tie down his tongue with a rope?

Can you put a cord through his nose
or pierce his jaw with a hook?

Will he keep begging you for mercy?
Will he speak to you with gentle words?

Will he make an agreement with you
for you to take him as your slave for life?

Can you make a pet of him like a bird
or put him on a leash for your girls?

Will traders barter for him?
Will they divide him up among the merchants?

Can you fill his hide with harpoons
or his head with fishing spears?

If you lay a hand on him,
you will remember the struggle and never do it again!

Any hope of subduing him is false;
the mere sight of him is overpowering.

No one is fierce enough to rouse him.
Who then is able to stand against me?

Who has a claim against me that I must pay?
Everything under heaven belongs to me.

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

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

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

His back has rows of shields
tightly sealed together;

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strength resides in his neck;
dismay goes before him.

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

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

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

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

Iron he treats like straw
and bronze like rotten wood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The footnote in my Bible suggests that the leviathan might be the crocodile. I wonder if it might not be something more like the dragon of fantasy stories. Either that, or some now-extinct creature who fits every part of the description better than the croc.