Fish Spear

The fish-spear is a barbed weapon for taking large aquatic prey. The UPDV mentions it once, in Yahweh's interrogation of Job over the creature leviathan.

Yahweh's Challenge to Job

In the climactic speeches of the book of Job, Yahweh confronts Job with a long catalogue of rhetorical questions about leviathan. The opening volley sets the scale: "Can you draw out leviathan with a fishhook? Or press down his tongue with a cord?" (Job 41:1). The questions move through ropes, hooks, treaties, play, and trade, and arrive at the heaviest fishing tackle a person could deploy: "Can you fill his skin with barbed irons, Or his head with fish-spears?" (Job 41:7). The fish-spear is named alongside the barbed iron as an instrument adequate for ordinary great fish but useless against this creature. The implication is that no human gear, however heavy, will land him.