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The identical test, posed and failed: the world-encircling sea-serpent hooked from a small boat, drawn up just far enough for a face-to-face look, and then lost. In both texts the climax is not combat but the unbearable sight · the gaze exchanged at the gunwale · after which the serpent returns to the deep untaken and intact. Job frames it as a rhetorical impossibility; the Edda narrates the one attempt and even its narrator concedes 'the Midgard-serpent still lives and lies in the ocean.'
Thor baits 'a very strong line' with an ox-head; the Midgard Serpent takes the hook and is hauled to the gunwale · 'no one has ever seen a more terrible sight than when Thor whet his eyes on the serpent, and the latter stared at him and spouted venom' · then Hymir cuts the line 'whereby the serpent sank back into the sea.'
set against Job 41
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