Halakhah for Job 40:31

And you already knew that the words of our rabbis follow the Torah’s means of expression, and so in the Torah there are permitted and prohibited foods: this you shall eat; this you shall not eat, and it is written, “from their flesh you shall not eat.”²⁷Lev 11:8. You wouldn’t say that this is an allegory – God forbid! – but it’s the actual literal meaning. And so they went on to say The Holy One, blessed be He, will in time to come make a sukkah for the righteous from the skin of Leviathan; for it is said: “Can you fill sukkot with his skin?”²⁸Job 40:31. Sukkot here is spelled with a sin, not a samekh as in sukkah meaning “tent,” and means “darts.” Thus, the meaning of the verse in context is “Can you fill his skin with darts?” If a man is worthy, a sukkah is made for him; if he is not worthy, a shadow [tzel] is made for him, for it is said: “And his head with a fish covering [bi-tziltzel].”²⁹Job 30:41. R. Bahya following the Talmud takes the two parts of this verse in Job as contrasting: the first part hints at the reward of the worthy, the second part to the punishment of the unworthy – “shade.” After this he skips a few lines of Talmud that expand on this theme of the worthy and unworthy’s “rewards.” The rest [of Leviathan] will be spread by the Holy One, blessed be He, upon the walls of Jerusalem, and its splendor will shine from one end of the world to the other; as it is said: “And nations shall walk by Your light.”³⁰Is 60:3, in b. Baba Batra 75a.