Taming the sea and its monsters

Back to the story

• Investigation: Behemoth and Leviathan →God's second speech ends with two creatures. Behemoth eats grass, lies in the reeds and is unbothered by the Jordan in flood; most scholars identify it as the hippopotamus. Leviathan has impenetrable scales, terrible teeth, breathes fire and makes the deep boil; it has been read as the crocodile, the whale, or the mythic sea-serpent known from Ugarit (Lotan). Later Jewish tradition made them primeval monsters. Some modern readers propose dinosaurs. The evidence, read whole, supports real animals painted with mythic colour, and no single identification should be made dogma.
• Canst Thou Draw Out Leviathan? →Can Job catch Leviathan with a hook, make it beg, make a covenant with it, play with it like a bird, sell it to merchants? Lay a hand on it once and you will not do it again. Its scales are shields sealed together; its sneezes flash light, its eyes are like the dawn, flames and smoke pour from its mouth. Its heart is hard as stone; swords and spears are useless; it makes the deep boil like a pot. "Upon earth there is not his like… he is a king over all the children of pride."
• He Hangeth the Earth upon Nothing →Job mocks Bildad's help. Then comes a hymn to God's power: the shades tremble beneath the waters, Sheol is naked before him, he stretches the north over emptiness and hangs the earth upon nothing, binds water in clouds, sets a circle on the waters at the boundary of light and darkness. The pillars of heaven tremble; by his power he stilled the sea, by his understanding struck Rahab; his hand pierced the fleeing serpent. "Lo, these are parts of his ways… but the thunder of his power who can understand?"
• Let the Day Perish →After seven days of silence Job speaks, and the book changes from prose to poetry. He curses the day he was born and the night he was conceived, asking that darkness reclaim them. He wishes he had died at birth and lay at rest with kings, prisoners and slaves, where "the weary be at rest." He asks why light is given to those who long for death. He does not curse God; he curses his own beginning.
• Where Wast Thou? →"Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind." God does not explain the heavenly test. He asks questions: where was Job when the earth was founded and the morning stars sang? Who shut in the sea with doors? Has Job commanded the dawn, walked in the depths, seen the gates of death? Where do light and darkness live? Who made the storehouses of snow and hail, the channels for rain on land where no one lives? Can Job bind the Pleiades or loose Orion, hunt prey for the lion, feed the raven's young?
• Isaiah 27: Leviathan the Crooked Serpent →"In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea" (27:1). A new vineyard song: God guards his vineyard night and day; "fury is not in me"; let thorns make peace with him; Israel will fill the world with fruit (vv. 2–6). Israel's punishment was measured; its guilt removed when the altar stones are crushed like chalk and the Asherah poles fall (vv. 7–9). The fortified city lies desolate (vv. 10–11). God will thresh from the Euphrates to the Wadi of Egypt and gather Israel one by one; a great trumpet will call the lost in Assyria and the outcasts in Egypt to worship on the holy mountain at Jerusalem (vv. 12–13).
• Isaiah 51: Awake, O Arm of the LORD →"Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn… Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you": God will make Zion's desert like Eden (51:1–3). His law and justice go out as a light to the peoples; the heavens will vanish like smoke, but his salvation is forever; do not fear human reproach (vv. 4–8). "Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord… Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?… that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?" (vv. 9–11). Why fear mortals who wither like grass? (vv. 12–16). "Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk… the cup of his fury": God takes the cup from her and gives it to her tormentors (vv. 17–23).
• Investigation: The Holy One and the Sea Monsters →Isaiah's God is "the Holy One of Israel," enthroned above seraphim (6), presiding over a heavenly court (6:8; 40:1–8), creator of everything including light and darkness (45:7), who once struck the sea dragon Rahab (51:9) and will slay Leviathan, "the piercing serpent… the crooked serpent" (27:1). Many of these images have close parallels in the literature and art of Israel's neighbors: winged serpents in Egyptian and Judahite art, divine assemblies at Ugarit, the Babylonian creation epic, and the Ugaritic Lotan, "the fleeing serpent, the twisting serpent." This investigation sets each Isaiah text beside its closest ancient comparison and asks what the comparison shows, and what it does not.