Introduction
Puritan
commentator, Matthew Poole, notes that ‘very learned men take the
leviathan to be the crocodile, and the behemoth to be a creature called the
hippopotamus, which may seem fitly to be joined with the crocodile, both being
very well known to Job and his friends, as being frequent in the adjacent
parts, both amphibious, living and preying both in the water and upon the land,
and both being creatures of great bulk and strength.’
Bible translations
of the Reformation period translated the almost untameable creature of Job
39:9-10 as a ‘unicorn’, a purely mythological creature. We now know this Hebrew word to have been
either the extinct aurochs, which was the grandfather of most cattle, or
another wild bull. This creature was
hunted to extinction but once roamed in large numbers across the
Mediterranean. The reason for this
laughable mistranslation by the Reformers was because of a previous
mistranslation; the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament used the word
‘monokeros’ which means single-horned.
This prompted Jerome to interpret this as a rhinoceros, when producing
the Latin Vulgate. But, whilst it is
easy to shake our heads at the silliness of these prior interpretations, there
are two other creatures from these final chapters of Job which are subjected to
equally fanciful interpretations – the behemoth and the leviathan.
Notable Presbyterian historian and commentator, Barnes, confirms that this fits
perfectly with the historical evidence: ‘These
two animals, as being Egyptian wonders, are everywhere mentioned together by
ancient writers’.
I agree with this interpretation but many other Evangelicals take this either to mean fictitious creatures or dinosaurs. Several points of confusion are typically raised against the interpretation proposed by this article but I believe they are easily resolved.
Behemoth
Firstly, many
say that the tail of the behemoth of Job 40 is said to be like a cedar tree,
but that a hippo’s tail is clearly not that
big. But the word in verse 17 for ‘moves’
his tail like a cedar tree is not recognised as the correct translation by the
majority of Biblical scholars. The NET Bible translation notes, though they
do not agree that this refers to a hippo, nevertheless recognise the meaning of
this word: ‘The verb חָפַץ (khafats) occurs only here. It may have the meaning “to make stiff; to make taut” (Arabic). The LXX and the Syriac versions support this with “erects.”’
Seeing as the context, from verse 16, is primarily talking about this
animal’s loins, we automatically get a clue as to where this is going.
The ESV Study Bible notes conclude, ‘“Tail” is a common euphemism for phallus. It is to be so interpreted in this verse, considering the description of the anatomy of the animal. Potency is often associated with procreative power. In the medieval period, Behemoth was conceived as a symbol of sensuality’. Likewise, ‘sinews’ of the following sentence was translated as ‘testicles’ in ancient versions such as the Latin and the Jewish Targum.
Therefore this does not refer to a massive tail swaying around, the size of an enormous tree, but simply refers to the prowess and potency of the ever-notoriously dangerous hippo.
The ESV Study Bible notes conclude, ‘“Tail” is a common euphemism for phallus. It is to be so interpreted in this verse, considering the description of the anatomy of the animal. Potency is often associated with procreative power. In the medieval period, Behemoth was conceived as a symbol of sensuality’. Likewise, ‘sinews’ of the following sentence was translated as ‘testicles’ in ancient versions such as the Latin and the Jewish Targum.
Therefore this does not refer to a massive tail swaying around, the size of an enormous tree, but simply refers to the prowess and potency of the ever-notoriously dangerous hippo.
The NET notes
further rebut that this could be a hippo with the second argument: ‘the
location of such an animal [the hippo] is Egypt and not Palestine.’ Immediately, this argument fails, as Job was certainly familiar
with the ostrich, spoken of in chapter 39, verse 13, and this bird is also
native to Africa, but no one questions how Job would have been familiar it.
In fact, the hippo’s location in Egypt is actually evidence for the behemoth being a hippo. Strong’s Lexicon tells us that the word here is ‘really a singular of Egyptian derivation: a water ox, that is, the hippopotamus or Nile horse’. Interestingly, in Italian, the hippo is called the ‘sea ox’ and we derive our English word, ‘hippopotamus’, from the Greek words for ‘river horse’.
Furthermore, Job could easily have been familiar with animals from Egypt. In Job 40:15, God says, ‘Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox (KJV).’ Poole says of the Hebrew here that it could just as readily mean near to you, ‘i.e. in a place not far from thee, to wit, in the river Nile, where the hippopotamus, as well as the crocodile, doth principally abide.’ According to Dr. Gill’s commentary, the great French Protestant scholar of Oriental languages, Bochart, ‘interprets it of the river horse, [taking] the meaning of this phrase to be that it was a creature in Job's neighbourhood, an inhabitant of the river Nile in Egypt, to which Arabia joined…which is testified by many writers.’
Job was ‘the greatest of all the men of the east’, according to verse 3 of chapter 1; he surely would have had knowledge of the world from the River Nile to the Mesopotamian plain.
In fact, the hippo’s location in Egypt is actually evidence for the behemoth being a hippo. Strong’s Lexicon tells us that the word here is ‘really a singular of Egyptian derivation: a water ox, that is, the hippopotamus or Nile horse’. Interestingly, in Italian, the hippo is called the ‘sea ox’ and we derive our English word, ‘hippopotamus’, from the Greek words for ‘river horse’.
Furthermore, Job could easily have been familiar with animals from Egypt. In Job 40:15, God says, ‘Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox (KJV).’ Poole says of the Hebrew here that it could just as readily mean near to you, ‘i.e. in a place not far from thee, to wit, in the river Nile, where the hippopotamus, as well as the crocodile, doth principally abide.’ According to Dr. Gill’s commentary, the great French Protestant scholar of Oriental languages, Bochart, ‘interprets it of the river horse, [taking] the meaning of this phrase to be that it was a creature in Job's neighbourhood, an inhabitant of the river Nile in Egypt, to which Arabia joined…which is testified by many writers.’
Job was ‘the greatest of all the men of the east’, according to verse 3 of chapter 1; he surely would have had knowledge of the world from the River Nile to the Mesopotamian plain.
Leviathan
Well then, what
is the leviathan? The Reformation Study Bible notes not only make a terrible mistake
by suggesting that behemoth and leviathan are the same creature, but they also
rely on Pagan distortions of this animal to deduce its real identity: ‘Canaanite
literature describes the goddess Anat overcoming a…seven-headed “Leviathan.”’ They thus conclude that both the behemoth and the leviathan are purely symbolic. Yet
God says that He ‘made’ them and calls Job to ‘see’ them performing certain
actions. I do not think there is any
need to shroud the leviathan with a sense of mystery simply because the
Canaanites wrote about a fictitious one with seven heads. Hinduism depicts beings with several heads, as
do other mythologies, but this does not mean Christians should refuse to
recognise the existence of the real animals they distort in their minds. After all, the context of the previous two chapters shows God discussing lions, oxen, donkeys, ostriches, eagles etc., all of which would have been animals Job was relatively familiar with.
Strong’s Lexicon, again, defines the word ‘leviathan’ as ‘a serpent
(especially the crocodile or some other large sea monster); figuratively
the constellation of the dragon’. Barnes scrutinises the description given in
Job 41 to confirm the true identity: ‘the description suits no animal but the crocodile or
alligator; and it is not necessary to seek elsewhere. The crocodile is a
natural inhabitant of the Nile, and other Asiatic and African rivers. It is a
creature of enormous voracity and strength, as well as fleetness in swimming.
He will attack the largest animals, and even men, with the most daring impetuosity.
In proportion to his size he has the largest mouth of all monsters. The upper
jaw is armed with forty sharp strong teeth, and the under jaw with
thirty-eight. He is clothed with such a coat of mail as cannot be pierced, and
can in every direction resist a musket-ball.’
Furthermore, Keil and Delitzschs’ commentary lays out the substantial argument for this word being a crocodile from the testimony of the near-Eastern languages.
Furthermore, Keil and Delitzschs’ commentary lays out the substantial argument for this word being a crocodile from the testimony of the near-Eastern languages.
Dr. Gill
concludes with the testimony of the 1st century Jewish natural
historian, Pliny: ‘Could the crocodile be established as the “leviathan”, and the behemoth as the river horse, the transition from the one to the other would appear very easy; since, as Pliny says, there is a sort of a kindred between them, being of the same river, the river Nile, and so may be thought to be better known to Job’.
Nevertheless,
some still devise fantastical ideas in their minds in order to justify the
notion of these two animals being dinosaurs.
The Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon exemplifies this with its definition of
the word Leviathan: ‘Some think this to be a crocodile but from the
description…this is patently absurd. It appears to be a large fire breathing
animal of some sort. Just as the bombardier beetle has an explosion producing
mechanism, so the great sea dragon may have an explosive producing mechanism to
enable it to be a real fire breathing dragon.’
Your eyes didn’t deceive you; you just read an actual attempt by scholars to insist that the description of a crocodile, here, was ‘absurd’ and then go on to present the alternate theory of a ‘real fire-breathing dragon’. This reads more like an example for the definition for ‘irony’.
Your eyes didn’t deceive you; you just read an actual attempt by scholars to insist that the description of a crocodile, here, was ‘absurd’ and then go on to present the alternate theory of a ‘real fire-breathing dragon’. This reads more like an example for the definition for ‘irony’.
The reason many Christians feel they must resort to this unnecessarily
complicated, far-fetched interpretation is because the leviathan and behemoth
are described as performing very plausible actions and yet the leviathan is
then said to have sparks and flames shooting from its mouth and smoke ascending
from its nostrils (Job 41:18-21).
Automatically, imagery of dragons breathing fire, imagery taken from
Pagan mythology, is conjured to the mind, but is this really what is being
described?
God begins this description of the leviathan thus: ‘His snorting releases flashes of light;
his eyes are like the rays of the dawn (ISV).’
Again, Dr. Gill, who was himself a brilliant linguistic scholar and
historian, observes that ‘The eyes of the crocodile were, with the
Egyptians, an hieroglyphic of the morning: wherefore this seems better to agree
with the crocodile’. It must be noted that,
so far, the evidence connecting the crocodile to the River Nile and, thus, to
the hippo and to the text of Job 40-41, is overwhelming.
The breathing of fire and the smoke from the nostrils is clearly figurative and this should not come as a surprise. Figurative language is clearly used numerous times in these chapters; just look at how many times the words ‘as’ and ‘like’ are used in chapter 41 alone. The figurative is used for the hippo also in chapter 40, verse 18, where its ‘bones are tubes of bronze’. This is a definite statement and is only shown to be symbolic by the fact that its limbs are ‘like bars of iron’. So too, the figurative language in the context of chapter 41 determines that the crocodile here does not actually breathe fire, but merely ‘his snorting releases flashes of light’. The great German theologian, Professor Lange, among others, notes Bochart’s interpretation: ‘[W]hen the crocodile turned toward the sun with open jaws is excited to sneezing, the water and slime gushing from his mouth glisten brilliantly in the sunbeams.’ Gill further quotes Pliny’s early Jewish understanding of this ‘flash of light’: ‘it throws out showers and floods of water, as Pliny relates; which, by means of the rays of the sun, as in a rainbow, appear bright and glittering’.
Therefore, it seems clear that these verses refer to the crocodile creating a great, bright spectacle by casting up a large quantity of water droplets against the dawn’s light and so it appears to shoot out a great cloud of light from its nose.
The breathing of fire and the smoke from the nostrils is clearly figurative and this should not come as a surprise. Figurative language is clearly used numerous times in these chapters; just look at how many times the words ‘as’ and ‘like’ are used in chapter 41 alone. The figurative is used for the hippo also in chapter 40, verse 18, where its ‘bones are tubes of bronze’. This is a definite statement and is only shown to be symbolic by the fact that its limbs are ‘like bars of iron’. So too, the figurative language in the context of chapter 41 determines that the crocodile here does not actually breathe fire, but merely ‘his snorting releases flashes of light’. The great German theologian, Professor Lange, among others, notes Bochart’s interpretation: ‘[W]hen the crocodile turned toward the sun with open jaws is excited to sneezing, the water and slime gushing from his mouth glisten brilliantly in the sunbeams.’ Gill further quotes Pliny’s early Jewish understanding of this ‘flash of light’: ‘it throws out showers and floods of water, as Pliny relates; which, by means of the rays of the sun, as in a rainbow, appear bright and glittering’.
Therefore, it seems clear that these verses refer to the crocodile creating a great, bright spectacle by casting up a large quantity of water droplets against the dawn’s light and so it appears to shoot out a great cloud of light from its nose.
Conclusion
I must conclude that the behemoth is a hippo and the leviathan, a crocodile. The context of Scripture and the plentiful
historical data leave me with no other reasonable option. In these chapters of Job, it is clear that
God discusses animals which are easier to tame and those that tremendously
difficult to tame. The point is not to
describe a couple of dinosaurs but to show that whilst mankind can tame various
animals, only an almighty and sovereign God can tame rebellious mankind.
Job 40:12-14
Look on everyone who is proud and bring him low
and tread down the wicked where they stand.
Hide them all in the dust together;
bind their faces in the world below.
Then will I also acknowledge to you
that your own right hand can save you.
Look on everyone who is proud and bring him low
and tread down the wicked where they stand.
Hide them all in the dust together;
bind their faces in the world below.
Then will I also acknowledge to you
that your own right hand can save you.
