What do these words mean: “Will you play with him as with a bird, or will you leash him for your maidens?” (Job 41:5)?

At times, the Holy Bible depicts the devil as a terrible dragon, a roaring lion, or an aggressive crocodile, etc.; but at other times, as little fox lacking strength. If a person confronts the enemy of good using his own capabilities, he is be terrified before this violent enemy. But if he hides in the grace of God he sees the reality of the devil’s insignificance and his impotence to harm him. A bird that is domesticated is suitable for children to play with for amusement and entertainment, but not so with Leviathan (a monster). Sometimes, birds are caught and caged, and little girls can safely stand close to them and enjoy watching them. In some developing countries, parents tie birds to a string like a leash for their children’s entertainment.

St. Gregory of Nyssa says, “Then there are all the fearful and awful things that the Word narrates about him in the book of Job: his ribs are of bronze and his limbs of cast iron (cf.

708 St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the First Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians 23.2 (NPNF I/12:132) amended.

709 St. Macarius the Great, Fifty Spiritual Homilies of St. Macarius the Egyptian , trans., A. J. Mason (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1921) Sermon 3.6: p. 19, amended.

Job 40:18), and his entrails are powdered stone (cf. Job 41:7)—and all the statements of this sort by whose means the scriptural text sketches that fear some nature. Such he is, then, and so great, the commanding general of the legions of demons. But how is this one named by the true and only Power? He is a little fox ! And all those who are about him, the army that is under his orders, all are disparagingly named in the same way by the one who urges the hunters to chase them down.”⁷¹⁰