JOB 41
LEVIATHAN
He sees everything that is high.
He is king over all the sons of pride.
—Job 41:34
The man read the Lord’s next speech aloud:
Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook
or press down his tongue with a cord?
Can you put a rope in his nose
or pierce his jaw with a hook?
Will he make many pleas to you?
Will he speak to you soft words?522
Will he make a covenant with you?
Will you take him as a servant forever?523
Can you play with him like a bird
or put him on a leash for your girls?524
Will traders bargain over him?
Will they divide him up among the merchants?
Can you fill his skin with harpoons
or his head with fishing spears?525
Lay a hand on him.
You will remember the battle
and never repeat it!
Any hope of capturing him proves false.
Does a person not collapse at the very sight of him?
No one is ferocious enough to rouse Leviathan.
Who then can stand against Me?526
Who has a claim against Me that I must pay?
Everything under heaven belongs to Me.527
I will not be silent about his limbs,
or his mighty strength,
or his graceful frame.
Who can strip off his outer covering?
Who can pierce his double armor?528
Who can open his jaws,
surrounded by those terrifying teeth?
His pride is in his rows of scales,
closely sealed together.
One scale is so close to another
that no air can pass between them.529
His sneezes flash forth light,
and his eyes are like the eye of dawn.530
Out of his mouth go flaming torches.
Sparks of fire leap forth.531
Smoke billows from his nostrils
as from a boiling pot or burning reeds.532
His breath kindles coals,
and a flame comes forth from his mouth.533
The tremendous strength in Leviathan’s neck
strikes terror wherever it goes.534
The folds of his flesh are joined together,
firm and immovable on him.535
His heart is hard as a stone,
hard as the lower millstone.536
When Leviathan rises, the mighty are terrified,
they withdraw because of his thrashing.537
The sword that reaches him cannot prevail,
nor the spear, the dart, or the javelin.538
Iron is nothing but straw to that creature,
and bronze is like rotten wood.539
No arrow can make him flee.
Slingstones become like stubble to him.540
Clubs are like a blade of grass,
and he laughs at the swish of javelins.
His belly is covered with scales as sharp as glass.
His plows up the ground as it drags through the mud.541
He makes the deep boil like a pot.
he makes the sea like a pot of ointment.542
He leaves a shining wake behind him.
One would think the deep had gray hair.
He has no equal on Earth.
A creature devoid of fear!543
He sees everything that is high.
He is king over all the sons of pride.544
Then Job answered the Lord and said,545
I know that You can do anything
and no plan of Yours can be thwarted.546
You asked,
“Who is this that questions My wisdom with such ignorance?”
It is I, and I was talking about things I knew nothing about,
things far too wonderful for me.547
You said, “Listen now, and I will speak.
I will question you, and you shall answer Me.”548
I had only heard about You before,
but now I have seen You with my own eyes.
I take back everything I said,
and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.549
The man looked up and said, “What do you make of that?”
The boy drew in a deep breath and let it out again. “I have no idea what to make of that.”
The man gave a nod. “Finally, we arrive at the major focus of God’s dialogue, yet the difficulty interpreting the ending of the book makes all the difference in how we understand the book as a whole, as well as our opinion of God’s rule in the Old Testament.
“Now, I’ve explored a few theories over the years, where widely differing and incompatible interpretations are given, but let me first tell you who Leviathan is not, and why those theories don’t explain why we see Job go from defiant criticism to wholehearted worship.”
“Alright,” said the boy. “I’m ready to hear what you’ve got after that lesson on elephants.”
The man cleared his throat with a slight blush. “Well, let’s start with Leviathan as a crocodile, which is the lazy man’s out in my opinion. Or perhaps the interpreter choosing to remain ignorant as they turn a blind eye to the culture surrounding Job. But we’ll get to that soon enough.
“First, we should observe that although the Lord answers Job, he does so mostly with a series of questions. Some people take these questions to be sarcasm. Something akin to, ‘Thank you, Job, for your twenty chapters worth of advice on how to run My universe. Do you think you can do it better?’ But I disagree. I think they provide a more sincere response to Job’s biggest question, which is, of course, ‘Why do I, Job, suffer the way I do when I don’t deserve it?’ We have to ask ourselves if responding to Job’s question like this can be satisfying when interpreting Leviathan as a crocodile.
“Pay attention to how the force of the rhetorical questions collapses if God says, ‘Look there, Job, at yet another normal animal like I’ve already listed numerous of. Can you hook him with a fishing rod? Can you penetrate his scales with spears? Will traders bargain for him? Huh? What’s that? Your neighbors in Egypt have already been doing those things as far back as the historical records go? Why, I guess I hadn’t realized that and feel ill-prepared. Please, spare Me the embarrassment and worship Me anyway, after providing an answer that doesn’t make any sense at all. And maybe we can throw this story into the Holy Bible so everyone can witness My blunder while we’re at it.’”
The boy smiled. “I see your point. So it really was a dinosaur.”
“Hold your horses, kid. I’ll get to that soon enough. First, we have to get past how if I ask God about unjust suffering, the response of ‘Can you catch a lizard?’ might possibly satisfy me. The arguments I’ve heard are things like, God fashioned creatures that are ugly and dangerous by human standards, making the point that He isn’t bound by human standards of aesthetics or security. Or that Job wasn’t comforted by what God said, but he was simply comforted by the presence of God in general. According to these interpreters, the description of this run-of-the-mill reptile shows the power and wisdom of God’s creation, and they are so impressive to a man who is powerless to understand or control them that he’s awestruck into trusting God and drops his concern about injustice.
“The lesson here would be something like, God isn’t our heavenly bellboy, waiting to answer our questions as we please. Instead, He’s the sovereign Maker of Heaven and Earth and reptiles to whom we should pray. And while that might be true, God’s sovereignty was never in question for Job. This means that the explanation where the second speech is simply an extension of the first, where the point would essentially be the same, doesn’t clarify why it inspires Job to repent in dust and ashes and withdraw his words as he shares a whole new vision of God.”
“I see what you’re saying,” said the boy. “Job’s response probably would have been more like, ‘Yeah, God, you already mentioned some animals. Can I go now?’”
“Precisely,” said the man. “Now, I have seen commentators take this interpretation and use it to make some sinister implications for the Lord. They say the description of the crocodile is a denial of justice, that the speech doesn’t address whether God was just to let Job suffer because He refuses the topic of dialogue altogether, simply dodging the question of a just rule. In this case, the speech concerns divine power alone, never addressing justice, meaning God merely overwhelms Job and does nothing to address the problem of evil.”
“Like my booga-booga theory,” said the boy.
“Right. Which would be a fair conclusion if Job did nothing but cower in fear. But that wasn’t the case here. Therefore, we have to look for clues as to what Leviathan could be, so Job’s response makes sense.”
“I’m ready,” said the boy, rubbing his hands together with a grin.
“Let’s start with the name Leviathan, which even sounds like more than a natural monster. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I would,” said the boy. “Jurassic even. So what does it mean?”
“It comes from a root in Hebrew that means to twist, turn, or coil, which brings a serpent-like creature to mind, does it not?”
The boy gave an eager nod.
“Isaiah confirms this imagery when he refers to this creature as a ‘fleeing serpent,’ and describes it as ‘twisting’ or ‘coiling,’ depending on the language we see from different translations.550 We’ll return to that language momentarily, but Isaiah also refers to this creature as a ‘dragon,’ a title supported by numerous translations, and mentions it living in the sea. The Psalms also support this idea of Leviathan living in the ‘vast and spacious’ ocean,551 which, to me, discounts the semi-aquatic crocodile who dwells in places where land is always in reach.
“Now, there is another section of the Psalms552 that refers to the heads of Leviathan, plural. Some people take this to mean that Leviathan was a multi-headed dragon of sorts, but my opinion is that Leviathan in that particular passage is used as another analogy for Egypt, just like we discussed with Rahab earlier. I say this because there is a parallel mention of splitting the sea right before the line. It mentions crushing the heads of Leviathan, meaning the heads of Egyptian men chasing after God’s chosen people. I believe it’s an expansion of the Exodus story like we already discussed in Psalms earlier, where we see a splitting of the sea, a crushing of heads of the pursuers, and a scattering of their bodies which washed up on shore to ‘feed the creatures of the wild,’ as the passage goes.
“So that leaves us with the poetic imagery confirming Leviathan was, indeed, a sea dragon. A single-headed sea dragon, in my opinion, but a dragon nonetheless.”
“Or a dinosaur!” said the boy.
“Listen, kid. Dinosaurs weren’t discovered until the 1600s. I looked it up because the idea crossed my mind as well. I hate to break it to you, but this story was written a couple of thousand years before that.”
“No,” said the boy, “fossils weren’t recorded until the 1600s. But why do you think the idea of dragons exists all over the world? Do you think Asians, Americans, Africans, and Europeans all came up with separate mythological dragon stories on their own? Or do you think maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with the fact that giant reptile bones were laying in the ground in all those places?”
The boy paused and tilted his head as the man mulled it over.
“Oh, come on,” said the boy. “You think just because some schlub wrote it down in the 1600s, he was the first guy to stumble upon a fossil? Humans have been roaming the earth and digging holes for who knows how long before that. It’s absurd. All these flying dragons, sea dragons, and land dragons have dinosaurs linked to their descriptions. You can at least admit there’s a possibility that’s where these stories came from, passed down through generations and embellished over campfires.”
“I suppose there’s always that possibility,” said the man. “But we seem to be getting away from the point I’m trying to make, which is how evidence for a dragon-like Leviathan existed in the folklore of cultures that surrounded Job.”
“Fine,” said the boy, crossing his arms.
“The point I’m trying to make is that whether or not there existed some kind of creature that could have inspired Leviathan, the idea of Leviathan himself had a resounding presence in the cultures around Job.
“Now, some Christians believe that studying these other religions may be a kind of sin, but I never saw doing so as a threat to my own faith. I think there’s a fear that the existence of one myth in the Bible would open the door to arguing the entire Bible is mythology, but I don’t care what other people might think. I know what I believe in my heart.
“Anyway, as I mentioned before, Job wasn’t a Jew in this story anyway, so his beliefs weren’t limited to the Scripture that didn’t exist yet. In order to get into the mind of Job, we need to know what he might have known. And his knowledge of Leviathan would have come from the stories of the surrounding cultures at the time. We don’t exactly know what Job believed in this regard, but we do know that he knew who Leviathan was. So in order to have a better understanding, I did a little reading into Leviathan-like myths that may have surrounded Job.
“There was a Canaanite god, Baal, who defeated a sea monster named Lotan, which translates to Leviathan in Hebrew. The biblical stories also resemble a Babylonian epic in which their god Marduk defeats a sea monster and goddess of chaos. There is even a story with similar language used, like what I mentioned with Isaiah, regarding a ‘fleeing’ and ‘twisting’ serpent.
“People are afraid to think that the biblical authors may have stolen their stories from these other cultures, but I don’t think that’s the case here. I believe the same name and language were used on purpose to say, ‘No, it wasn’t your polytheistic god that defeated this chaos monster, but the one and only Yahweh who created the monster of which you speak.’ It was a tactic to diminish surrounding religions, to send a message to pagan nations saying, ‘Your gods are nothing. Our God is everything.’ They weren’t stealing from neighboring cultures. The story of Leviathan was their culture. That’s my opinion anyway.”
“That makes sense,” said the boy.
“From Job’s point of view, this chaos monster, mythical beast, or based in reality, was likely who Job believed Leviathan to be. That is why so much text is dedicated to this creature, because of the significance of the surrounding cultural context. Not some common animal the Egyptians had been killing for years, something some people keep as pets for goodness sake. That's what I meant about the crocodile being the lazy man’s out, for those who never cared or were afraid to dig into the surrounding cultures of the past,” said the man. “Not to mention Leviathan ‘laughs’ at spears and can ‘speak soft words.’ That would be some crocodile!”
“David Attenborough never mentioned them spitting fire either,” said the boy with a smile.
The man pointed at the boy and said, “Now you’re catching on. Commentators try to chalk that up to water reflecting sunlight at the right angle as they sneeze, or some such thing, but that seems like a far reach to me. If anything, the only inspiration based in reality might have been the spitting cobras, who can blind a man if the burning venom gets in the eyes. Which, again, would support the serpent-like imagery. But I’ll never understand why we’d force modern ideals onto a perfectly good explanation surrounding Job’s culture. People seem to refuse to read these stories in the context of their times, ignoring the fire-breathing dragon that would have existed in Job’s mind. Leviathan was a chaos monster, a pictorial representation of the unseen forces of evil at work in the universe. Which brings me to my next point.”
“There’s more?” said the boy.
“Oh, we’re just getting started,” said the man. “Now, with today’s conception of an unseen force of chaos, you might think of spitting fire as a metaphor for evil words.”
“Words?” said the boy.
“Words,” said the man. “So let me ask you something. Who has been whispering evil into Mrs. Job’s ear? Who had the silver tongue in the garden of Eden?”
It all clicked for the boy in a way the man could see. “Ohhh. So you think the serpent in the garden and the serpent in the sea are both Satan?”
“Precisely, my boy. Precisely. Satan was cast out of paradise and into the sea. Metaphorically speaking, that is. As we saw in the beginning of our story, Satan is free to roam the earth as he pleases. But we see further support for this in Revelation,553 where the author says something along the lines of, ‘The great dragon, the ancient serpent called the Devil, was thrown down to the Earth.’ But we must keep in mind the depiction of a demon with a tail, and horns is an image we’re familiar with in the modern world, but this dragon-like creature is the poetic representation of chaos our ancestors would relate to. The point is that we finally see the supernatural evil that has so terribly afflicted Job’s life now arriving at the foreground of God’s speech.”
“About time,” said the boy.
“Yes, well, this is one reason God’s speeches are separated by the repeated challenge for Job to brace himself, to mark the transition where God shifts his focus from the natural world to the supernatural world. But let me refresh your memory on something in the previous chapter after God does this,” said the man, flipping back a page:
Are you as strong as God?
Can you thunder with a voice like his?
Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor,
and clothe yourself in honor and majesty.
“God’s speaking from the whirlwind, His reference to His strength, voice, and majesty, are Old Testament ways of describing His preparation for battle against foes, something seen throughout the Psalms. In the Leviathan chapter, God asks, ‘Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook, or press down his tongue with a cord? Can you put a rope in his nose, or pierce his jaw with a hook? Can you fill his skin with harpoons or his head with spears?’
“Notice how the force of all these rhetorical questions stands when the answer is a resounding ‘No.’ The purpose is not to humiliate Job, as some interpreters suppose, but rather to show that ‘no one is ferocious enough to rouse Leviathan,’ so ‘who then can stand against Me?’ The reason Leviathan has no equal ‘on Earth’ is because he lurks on God’s side of the metaphysical divide. Therefore, only the Lord is capable of subduing or summoning a monster that Job couldn’t even touch. Which, if you noticed, God did at the beginning of our story here, bringing our poem to a satisfying full circle to address what happened in chapters one and two.”
“Good,” said the boy. “I’ve been waiting for this.”
“Of course you have,” said the man. “The point here, though, is that since Job is powerless to defeat this force using the kinds of tools one might use to kill, say, a crocodile, he must trust that God has everything under control.”
The boy smiled. “I see what you did there.”
The man winked and went on. “Now God does this without offering any kind of apology, which would have been problematic for Job and everyone else around.”
“How so?” said the boy.
The man frowned and tilted his head to the side. “Well, imagine a world where every time someone felt they were suffering unjustly, God had to get off His heavenly throne and come down to Earth and apologize.”
The boy looked off in the distance to think about it, but the man went on before he could respond.
“This description of this evil force lurking behind the scenes, that only God can be trusted to keep at bay, is enough for Job to retract his statements and apologize for speaking out of line. Which is a good time to acknowledge that we could not merely rush from chapter two to forty-two without Job working his way through the darkness, falling down into the depths of hoping for death before this evil was unmasked. Only at that point could he re-ascend into the trust and faith he should have had in the Lord all along.
“Now, to begin this speech, God asked Job if he would condemn Him, to declare Him guilty to justify himself. We saw that Job had some distant notion of this cosmic force of chaos, but mostly his opinion was that only he and God were involved in his suffering, leading him to the assumption God was some kind of cruel tyrant who cares nothing for personal integrity or faith. But clearly God’s description of Leviathan brought it all home in a manner in which Job didn’t think about prior, and so he’s reconciled to both God and the universe He created, even though it sometimes includes unimaginable pain. So it wasn’t unfair for God to ask, ‘Would you really challenge My justice?’ because by the end we saw this drastic change in Job. Now tell me, what kind of crocodile warrants that?”
“None, I suppose,” said the boy.
“Of course, none,” said the man. “And if you needed any more convincing, just take a look at the last line, where God tells Job that Leviathan is king over all who are proud. Wherever you see vanity, arrogance, and egotism, you see the spirit of Leviathan. Whenever the pursuit of power, status, and wealth endures, you can attribute them to Satan’s dirty little paws.”
The boy narrowed his eyes. “Isn’t that what I’ve been saying all along?”
The man chuckled. “You’ve been saying that Leviathan represents Satan as the king of the proud all along?”
“No. Not exactly,” said the boy, “but I think you can give me a little credit in that after every one of Job’s speeches, I said he was only concerned about himself and money and status. His dialogue is nothing but envy and ego. I think God was being ironic when He told Job to look on every proud person and humble him. I think that was more like a, ‘Take a look in the mirror, Job.’ The line you just mentioned points out the issue that Job needs to resolve. Plus, the whole story makes a lot more sense if there’s a deeper lesson for Job to take away from his suffering.”
The man chuckled again. “I think you’ve just been reading into things that aren’t there. God confirmed in the beginning that Job is blameless and upright.”
The boy rolled his eyes. “But you can still be blameless and upright and arrogant at the same time. Sure, Job looks good on paper, but under the surface, his worship was never genuine. God gave him everything he needed to stand up to the raging river, but Job had turned around and started floating downstream with Satan. So God came down to put a stop to it, pointing out how Job spoke of rousing Leviathan instead of trusting in his own Creator. Which,” said the boy, “means Satan won your bet.”
“What?” said the man, a skeptical smirk sliding across his lips.
“Satan,” said the boy. “He won the bet, if that’s the way you’re looking at things.”
“I don’t think so,” said the man, raising an eyebrow.
“No?”
“Well, Job never cursed God to his face. Job had even questioned who else could be responsible for his suffering besides God, and now he sees this other force revealed. Although their relationship was marked by pain and anger in Job’s confusion, we saw that God never let go of Job, and Job never let go of God. Their relationship was unbreakable, as hard as Satan tried to break it. Which is another good lesson the book of Job teaches. God’s requirements when undergoing this kind of suffering are surprisingly minimal. Even if we say some things we may regret in the end, all He wants us to do is hold on.”
“Oh, come on,” said the boy. “You’re gonna let the fact that Satan was right slide on a technicality? If anything, God kinda cheated.”
“Cheated?” said the man. “How can you accuse the good Lord of cheating when everything under the heavens belongs to Him?”
“So I’ve heard,” said the boy. “But this bet didn’t take place ‘under the heavens.’ It took place in the heavens. My point is that God interfered with the wager, if it was a wager at all.”
“How so?” said the man. “What are you even referring to?”
“I’m saying the bet was, ‘Take away everything he owns and he’ll curse You.’ It wasn’t, ‘Take away everything he owns and then right when it looks like he’s about to curse You, swoop down and blame everything on me.’ If God had let Job sit on the ash heap any longer, I bet we would have seen him curse God.”
“Well, clearly Job was under the wrong assumption of who caused his suffering,” said the man. “Job accused God of attacking him like a warrior, so God deliberately describes Leviathan wearing armor, unmasking the real enemy who attacked Job. God had every right to point out the truth.”
“The truth?” said the boy. “But who was the commander of this warrior? Who gave Leviathan the go-ahead to attack Job? The truth is that God proposed Job in the first place when Satan was minding his own business. Sure, God proved Job loved him genuinely, but He did so by blaming someone else for Job’s suffering without disclosing He was the real cause.”
The man drew in a long breath. “Well, when it comes to the question of why there is suffering in God’s world, no, God doesn’t explain why. He says we live in a very complex but amazing world that at this point isn’t designed to prevent suffering. Job challenged God’s justice, so God responds by saying Job doesn’t have sufficient knowledge to make that claim. Job demanded an explanation, so God asked Job for trust in His wisdom and character. Job responds to these things with humility, saying he overstepped his bounds. The moral of the story is that God is always in control, especially when it comes to the forces of evil and suffering.”
“Yeah, but God didn’t exactly describe that, did He?”
“Well, His control over Satan was implied through all the rhetorical questions we covered. And Job’s response is even more moving because he remains ignorant of the true cause of his suffering. Job’s last line, taking back everything he said and sitting in dust and ashes to show repentance, seems to be a metaphor meaning Job was comforted by everything the Lord has said, enough so to remain in his current state of affairs yet hold onto his relationship with God. This goes a step beyond what Job had said after the first speech, about covering his mouth and the admission he’s said too much already. This expresses the worth of knowing God over every material blessing he had ever received. Notice how Job at no point asked for his old life or blessings to be restored.
“The book of Job is a warning that sometimes God will appear as if He were an enemy, but we learn here that unjust suffering is not the cause of a change in God’s character, so we may sit in the dust and ashes of our own suffering and maintain our faith in God. Rather than torturing ourselves in search of reasons we may never find, which puts us at risk of simplifying God like the friends did, or accusing God like Job did, we can see that sometimes God’s ways are beyond our understanding. It can be a difficult lesson to absorb, but we have to continue walking in faith despite our losses. The book invites us to bring our pain and grief to God and trust that He knows what He’s doing.”
There was a pause before the boy said, “Yeah, but I’m pointing out how this ending might satisfy Job because he was left in the dark, but it’s not satisfying for the reader, who knows what actually happened.”
“And why is that?” said the man.
“Because God sicked his dragon on Job! And then He blamed Job’s suffering on some force that exists ‘out there,’ on the loose, when in reality it was all over this wager the Devil you mentioned.”
“Yes, exactly,” said the man. “This was all part of God’s plan, to prove Satan wrong and show Job’s worship was genuine. And clearly it worked.”
“Yeah, but it only worked because God left out one little detail.”
“And that was?”
“That He was responsible for Job’s suffering all along! If Job had known that God said, ‘You see that guy over there?’ and then He allowed Satan to slaughter his whole family, I think Job’s opinion might have been slightly different than hearing God say, ‘You see, Job? There’s evil out there, and when you’re proud, it gets the best of you and kills your kids. Really, it’s your fault, but just trust that I’m getting it all under control, so here’s a new family.’ I think you’re getting so caught up in the whirlwind of distraction tactics God is throwing at Job that you’re not seeing how God never gives a satisfying answer for the fly on the wall.”
With a breath of frustration, the man said, “And suppose what you’re saying is true. What is your ending then? That God comes down to apologize for what He’s done and admits He has a gambling problem? That He gets dethroned by godless men, and in the power vacuum, the world becomes ruled by chaos? God had to come down and deliver a speech which shows He’s in control. This was the only ending. There is no alternative. There is no apology.
“The description of Leviathan not only positions God in a more glorious manner, but His description of the universe prompts Job to view God’s entire world differently. Job learns to view creation with the same joy God describes, a joy that not even a chaos monster can diminish. God commands the sun to rise every day, knowing there is a more sinister evil lurking in the shadows, but He does so joyfully. We, too, should see every new sunrise with joy, despite the sense that Satan is still around. God’s perspective trumps all human interpretations of life and of God’s rule. Without trivializing Job’s suffering, God invites him to view the world with a confidence he wouldn’t have otherwise seen.”
The boy let out a sigh. “I get all that, but that’s easy for God to say because He isn’t the one suffering. He’s the one inflicting suffering while Job is suffering.”
“Hence the significance of Job’s expression feeling comfort in the dust and ashes,” said the man. “And what we’re supposed to take away as readers. That there can always be something learned in suffering.”
“Yes, but all that ignores the false pretense under which Job said that to begin with.”
The man let out a frustrated sigh. “Let’s just move on to Job’s redemption. I think that may change your mind about whether or not God is just in his rule.”