The interpretation timeline

Job 41:17

How this passage has been read — the sources, oldest to newest.

From the early Church Fathers to now.

1 Patristic · 1 Catholic

Job 41:17 · Douay-Rheims
“When a sword shall lay at him, it shall not be able to hold, nor a spear, nor a breastplate.”
Patristic before A.D. 750
604
A.D.
Gregory the Great Patristic
c. A.D. 540–604
“They will adhere one to another, and holding each other they will not be separated. 55. For they who might be corrected, if divided, persevere, when united, in the obstinacy of their iniquities: and are day by day the more easily separable from the knowledge of righteousness, the more they are not mutually separated from each other by any reproach. For as it is wont to be injurious if unity be wanting to the good, so is it fatal if it be not wanting to the wicked. For unity strengthens the perverse, while it makes them accord; and it makes them the more incorrigible, the more unanimous. Of this unity of the reprobate it is said by a wise man; The congregation of sinners is tow gathered together. [Ecclus. 21, 9] Of this the Prophet Nahum says; As thorns embrace each other, so is the feast of those who drink together. [Nahum 1, 10] For the feast of the reprobate is the delight of temporal pleasures. In which feast they doubtless drink together, who make themselves drunk alike with the allurements of their delight. Because therefore an equal guilt unites, for their own defence, the members of this Leviathan, that is, all the wicked, whom the word of God compares to scales compacted together, it is well said; They will adhere one to another, and holding each other, they will never be separated. For they cannot be separated when holding each other, because they are the more bound together for their mutual defence, the more they remember that they are like each other in all things...”
Source
670 years pass — nothing from this stretch is hosted yet
Scholastic c. 1100 – 1500
1274
A.D.
Thomas Aquinas Catholic
1225–1274
“Therefore, to show the obstinacy of their consensus to evil he says, "One will adhere to another," by mutual favor and consent, "they hold themselves together and cannot be separated in any way," because of their obstinant consent in evil, like the scales of Leviathan cannot be separated from each other by human power.”
Modern · 1953 →

The in-app commentary runs from the Fathers to the early-modern record, then stops — that's where the public-domain sources end, not where the reading does. For the modern reading, follow the sources directly.