“30.  The waters are hardened like a stone, and the surface of the deep is frozen.”

What has this Arabian poem to do with so many allusions to clouds, rain, ice, snow, hail, frost, and frozen oceans?

“36.  Who hath put wisdom in the inward part?  Or who hath given understanding to the heart? "

Umbreit says that this word “heart” means literally “a shining phenomenon—­a meteor.”  Who hath given understanding to the comet to do this work?

“38.  When was the dust poured on the earth, and the clods hardened together?”

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One version makes this read: 

“Poured itself into a mass by the rain, like molten metal.”

And another translates it—­

“Is caked into a mass by heat, like molten metal, BEFORE THE RAIN FALLS.”

This is precisely in accordance with my theory that the “till” or “hard-pan,” next the earth, was caked and baked by the heat into its present pottery-like and impenetrable condition, long before the work of cooling and condensation set loose the floods to rearrange and form secondary Drift out of the upper portion of the débris.

But again I ask, when in the natural order of events was dust poured on the earth and hardened into clods, like molten metal?

And in this book of Job I think we have a description of the veritable comets that struck the earth, in the Drift Age, transmitted even from the generations that beheld them blazing in the sky, in the words of those who looked upon the awful sight.

In the Norse legends we read of three destructive objects which appeared in the heavens one of these was shaped like a serpent; it was called “the Midgard-serpent”; then there was “the Fenris wolf”; and, lastly, “the dog Garm.”  In Hesiod we read, also, of three monsters:  first, Echidna, “a serpent huge and terrible and vast”; second, Chimæra, a lion-like creature; and, thirdly, Typhœus, worst of all, a fierce, fiery dragon.  And in Job, in like manner, we have three mighty objects alluded to or described:  first the “winding” or “twisting” serpent with which God has “adorned the heavens”; then “behemoth,” monstrous enough to “drink up rivers,” “the chief of the ways of God”; and lastly,

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and most terrible of all, “leviathan”; the name meaning, the twisting animal, gathering itself into folds.”

God, speaking to Job, and reminding him of the weakness and littleness of man, says (chap. xl, v. 20): 

“Canst thou draw out the leviathan with a book, or canst thou tie his tongue with a cord? "

The commentators differ widely as to the meaning of this word “leviathan.”  Some, as I have shown, think it means the same thing as the crooked or “winding” serpent (vulg.) spoken of in chapter xxvi, v. 13, where, speaking of God, it is said: 

“His spirit hath adorned the heavens, and his artful hand brought forth the winding serpent.”