Wilt thou play with him as [with] a bird?.... In the hand or cage: leviathan plays in the sea, but there is no playing with him by land, Psalms 104:26;
or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens? or young girls, as Mr. Broughton renders it; tie him in a string, as birds are for children to play with? Now, though crocodiles are very pernicious to children, and often make a prey of them when they approach too near the banks of the Nile, or whenever they have an opportunity of seizing them k; yet there is an instance of the child of an Egyptian woman that was brought up with one, and used to play with it l, though, when grown up, was killed by it; but no such instance can be given of the whale of any sort.
k Aelian. l. 10. c. 21. l Maxim. Tyr. Sermon. 38.