Week 22 Job 41
I was thinking about Leviathan.
I realized yesterday that I really couldn’t say for sure what a Leviathan was. At first I thought my problem was solved when my bible had a note in the margin that said Leviathan meant “crocodile”. But when I checked other bible versions I found most did not use to the more well-known & familiar word crocodile. They preferred Leviathan.
I checked a cross-reference to one of the very few other references to Leviathan: you (the Lord) crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness. The bible’s margin said that Leviathan was a sea monster and not – as it said in Job – a crocodile.
In the only other psalm where Leviathan is mentioned the margin said Leviathan was a sea monster. I’m tempted to think the word monster might be being used here as a kind of exaggeration-for-emphasis technique (for instance “that wrestler is a real monster”). But I’m not so sure when is see the expression the heads of Leviathan. Why ‘heads’? I check other versions. Most of them agree that Leviathan had heads – plural.
So now Leviathan is sounding less like a crocodile and more like something else. A one-off. A solo act: nothing on earth is like him, one made without fear. He looks on everything that is high; he is king over all the sons of pride.
Note: quotes from Psalm 74:14 & Job 41:33-34 (NASB). And see Psalm 104:26