The answer
At times, the Holy Bible depicts the devil as a terrible dragon, a roaring lion, or an aggressive crocodile, etc.; but at other times, as little fox lacking strength. If a person confronts the enemy of good using his own capabilities, he is be terrified before this violent enemy. But if he hides in the grace of God he sees the reality of the devil’s insignificance and his impotence to harm him. A bird that is domesticated is suitable for children to play with for amusement and entertainment, but not so with Leviathan (a monster). Sometimes, birds are caught and caged, and little girls can safely stand close to them and enjoy watching them. In some developing countries, parents tie birds to a string like a leash for their children’s entertainment.
St. Gregory of Nyssa says, “Then there are all the fearful and awful things that the Word narrates about him in the book of Job: his ribs are of bronze and his limbs of cast iron (cf. Job 40:18), and his entrails are powdered stone (cf. Job 41:7)—and all the statements of this sort by whose means the scriptural text sketches that fear some nature. Such he is, then, and so great, the commanding general of the legions of demons. But how is this one named by the true and only Power? He is a little fox! And all those who are about him, the army that is under his orders, all are disparagingly named in the same way by the one who urges the hunters to chase them down.”710
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
710 St. Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on The Song of Songs, ed., Brian E. Daley S.J. and John T. Fitzgerald, trans., Richard A. Norris Jr. (Society of Biblical Literature, 2012) Homily 5: p. 177–179.