Job 41:26 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The sword of him that layeth at him That approacheth to him, and dares to strike at him; cannot hold Hebrew, בלי תקום, beli takum, cannot stand. Either, 1st, Cannot endure the stroke, but will be broken by it; or, 2d, Cannot take hold of him, or abide fixed in him; but is instantly beaten back by the excessive hardness of his skin, which cannot be pierced by it. This also seems much better to agree to the crocodile, whose skin no sword, nor dart, nor (as some add) musket-ball can pierce, than to the whale, whose skin is easily pierced, as experience shows, except the whales here spoken of were of another kind than those we are acquainted with. Nor the habergeon Hebrew, שׁריה, shirjah, which the margin of our Bible renders, breast-plate, and Ab. Ezra, a coat of mail, as the word means 1 Samuel 17:38. But Heath and Houbigant translate it here, the pike; and it evidently means some missile weapon.