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Job 41:19

Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out.

Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. Which, though hyperbolical expressions, have some foundation for them in the latter; in the vast quantities of water thrown out by the whale, through its mouth or hole in its frontispiece, which in the sun may look like lamps and sparks of fire, as before observed; and especially in the "orcae", or whales with teeth, which eject in the same way an oily mucus, or the fat liquor of the brain, commonly called spermaceti, which may appear more bright and glittering. Ovid {t} says much the same of the boar as is here said of the leviathan.


{t} "Fulmen ab ore venit; frondesque adflatibus ardent". Metamorph. c. 8. Fab. 4.

 

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