His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the lower millstone.
All Commentaries on Job 41:24 Go To Job 41
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
11. For the heart of the ancient enemy will be hardened as a stone, because it will never be softened by any penitence of conversion. And because he will be fitted only for the blows of eternal punishment, it is rightly immediately added;
And he will be bound as the anvil of the hammerer.
For the hammerer puts up an anvil fitted to receive blows only. For an anvil is erected for the very purpose of being struck with frequent blows. Leviathan therefore will be bound as the anvil of the hammerer, because he will be confined by the chains of hell, in order to be beaten with the continual blows of eternal punishment. And he is struck also even now, when any of the just are saved, as he is watching in ambush, but wasting away with pain. But in an anvil other vessels are wrought into shape, while the anvil itself by its many blows is not changed into a vessel of another kind. This Leviathan is therefore rightly compared to an anvil, because we are wrought into shape by his persecutions, but he is both always struck, and is never changed into a useful vessel. We abandon him to eternal blows, and we, who have been smitten through his temptation by the hand of the heavenly Artificer, come out by his means properly shaped vessels. For on him we are beaten, but it is that we may come into use for the House above. But he is bound as an anvil, because, though he now goes about the world with his temptations, yet when placed in the pit, under the blow of his sentence, he wanders no more.
