Job 40:16
Ver. 16. Lo now, his strength [is] in his loins,.... The strength of the elephant is well known, being able to carry a castle on its back, with a number of men therein; but what follows does not seem so well to agree with it;
and his force [is] in the navel of his belly; since the belly of the elephant is very tender; by means of which the rhinoceros, its enemy, in its fight with it, has the advantage of it, by getting under its belly, and ripping it up with its horn {s}. In like manner Eleazar the Jew killed one of the elephants of Antiochus, by getting between its legs, and thrusting his sword into its navel {t}; which fell and killed him with the weight of it. On the other hand, the "river horse" is covered with a skin all over, the hardest and strongest of all creatures {u}, as not to be pierced with spears or arrows {w}; and of it dried were made helmets, shields, spears, and polished darts {x}. That which Monsieur Thevenot {y} saw had several shot fired at it before it fell, for the bullets hardly pierced through its skin. We made several shot at him, says another traveller {z}, but to no purpose; for they would glance from him as from a wall. And indeed the elephant is said to have such a hard scaly skin as to resist the spear {a}: and Pliny {b}, though he speaks of the hide of the river horse being so thick that spears are made of it; yet of the hide of the elephant, as having targets made of that, which are impenetrable.
{s} Aelian. de Amimal. l. 17. c. 44. Plin. l. 8. c. 10, 20. Vid. Solin. c. 38. Diodor. Sic. l. 3. p. 167. & Strabo. Geograph. l. 16. p. 533. {t} Joseph. Ben Gorion. Hist. Heb. l. 3. c. 20. 1 Maccab. vi. 46. {u} Diodor. Sic. ut supra. (l. 3. p. 167) Plin. l. 8. c. 25. {w} Ptolem. Geograph. l. 7. c. 2. Fragment. Ctesiae ad Calcem Herodot. p. 701. Ed. Gronov. Boius apud Kircher. China cum Momument. p. 193. {x} Herodot. ut supra. (p. 701) Aristot. Hist. Animal. l. 2. c. 7. Plin. l. 11. c. 39. {y} Travels, part 1. c. 72. {z} Dampier's Voyages, vol. 2. part 2. p. 105. {a} Heliodor. Ethiop. Hist. l. 9. c. 18. {b} Nat. Hist. l. 11. c. 39. Vid. Vossium in Melam. de Situ Orbis, l. 1. c. 5. p. 28.