Week 21 Job 38-41
Chapters 38 & 39 have a long section that I think of as the Animal Episode. A bunch of animals are discussed: lions ravens goats deer donkeys oxen ostriches horses & hawks. 33-verses about animals.
The Animal Episode seems to end there and the next chapter moves on to another topic – a short (but serious) conversation between Job and the Lord. But then for some reason the rest of chapter 40 & all of 41 goes back to animals. This time a short list of just two animals: Behemoth & Leviathan. 40-verses about them.
The margin of my bible says that Behemoth is a hippopotamus and that Leviathan is a crocodile. It looks like the two weird creatures are regular animals but I check a couple of dozen other versions for Leviathan. Only one of them said crocodile (a couple of them even used sea monster). If Leviathan is a crocodile why not just use crocodile?
I checked online looking for Leviathan and saw that Leviathan was a demonic sea serpent. And Behemoth? A primitive chaos-monster. So this sounds more-and-more like Behemoth isn’t a regular hippopotamus and Leviathan isn’t regular crocodile.
Leviathan is used just six times in the bible. And Behemoth? Just this once. Making them pretty rare species in the bible.
With lions ravens goats deer donkeys oxen ostriches horses & hawks I figure I’m on pretty safe zoological grounds. But with Leviathan & Behemoth I think I’m getting out of my depth.
Note: Behemoth & Leviathan info from Wikipedia.