Shall the companions make a banquet of him? shall they part him among the merchants?
The question tests whether human beings can reduce Leviathan to ordinary merchandise to be served up at a feast and then cut up and distributed among traders. It pictures the great sea creature not as catch to be cooked and shared but as a being that resists such domestic use and commercial division. The very asking denies that people have power to dispose of him at will as food and goods.
The impossibility exposes Leviathan as beyond human mastery and beyond human comprehension. The mysteries found in the natural world stand as a rebuke to pretension, showing that human wisdom is narrow and finite. Confronted with such a creature, people are taught their limits rather than their control.
The question tests whether human beings can reduce Leviathan to ordinary merchandise to be served up at a feast and then cut up and distributed among traders. It pictures the great sea creature not as catch to be cooked and shared but as a being that resists such domestic use and commercial division. The very asking denies that people have power to dispose of him at will as food and goods.
The impossibility exposes Leviathan as beyond human mastery and beyond human comprehension. The mysteries found in the natural world stand as a rebuke to pretension, showing that human wisdom is narrow and finite. Confronted with such a creature, people are taught their limits rather than their control.