John Gill Commentary Job 41:5

"Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? Or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?" — Job 41:5 (ASV)

Will you play with him as [with] a bird ?
&c.] In the hand or cage: leviathan plays in the sea, but there is no playing with him by land, (Psalms 104:26);

or will you bind him for your maidens ?
or young girls, as Mr. Broughton renders it; tie him in a string, as birds are for children to play with? Now, though crocodiles are very pernicious to children, and often make a prey of them when they approach too near the banks of the Nile, or whenever they have an opportunity of seizing them ^F11 ; yet there is an instance of the child of an Egyptian woman that was brought up with one, and used to play with it ^F12 , though, when grown up, was killed by it; but no such instance can be given of the whale of any sort.

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FOOTNOTES:

• F11: Aelian. l. 10. c. 21.
• F12: Maxim. Tyr. Sermon. 38.