Bible Strands
Job 41:20
Smoke billows from his nostrils as from a boiling pot over burning reeds.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Elihu addresses Job in his poetic discourse, describing the creature Leviathan to illustrate overwhelming power.
The words — נָפ֣וּחַ (na.Fu.ach) means "blown upon," and עָשָׁ֑ן ('a.Shan) means "smoke," describing the mechanism of the exhalation.
The thread — The boiling pot imagery reappears in Jeremiah 1:13, where a tilting pot represents impending judgment.
Why it lands — The passage demands acknowledgment that Leviathan functions beyond human control, leaving the reader to accept the limits of their own authority.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 1:13 Again the word of the LORD came to me, asking, “What do you see?” “I see a boiling pot,” I replied, “and it is tilting toward us from the north.”