behemoth

Behemoth and Leviathan, watercolour by William Blake from his Illustrations of the Book of Job.

Behemoth ( /bɨˈhiːməθ/ or /ˈbiː.əməθ/, also /ˈbeɪ.əmɔːθ/; Hebrew בהמות, behemoth (modern: behemot)) is a mythological beast mentioned in the Book of Job, 40:15-24.^[1] Metaphorically, the name has come to be used for any extremely large or powerful entity.

Plural as singular

The feminine plural Hebrew noun behemoth is used in Joel 1:20. Job 40 is an example of the use of a plural noun suffix to mean "great", rather than plural. Another example is Elohim for God, singular.

Description

Job 40:15-24 describes Behemoth, and then the sea-monster Leviathan, to demonstrate to Job the futility of questioning God, who alone has created these beings and who alone can capture them.^[2] Some believe both beasts are chaos monsters destroyed by the deity at the time of creation, although such a conflict is not found in the creation account.^[3] Leviathan is identified figuratively with both the primeval sea (Job 3:8;Ps. 74:13) and in apocalyptic literature - describing the end-time - as that adversary, the Devil, from before creation who will finally be defeated. In the divine speeches in Job, Behemoth and Leviathan may both be seen as composite and mythical creatures with enormous strength, which humans like Job could not hope to control. But both are reduced to the status of divine pets, with rings through their noses and Leviathan on a leash.^[4] Among Young Earth Creationists, who believe man and dinosaurs (along with all other land animals) were made on day 6 of Creation Week, Behemoth is commonly identified as possibly being a sauropod dinosaur.^[5]

¹⁵ Behold now the behemoth that I have made with you; he eats grass like cattle.
¹⁶ Behold now his strength is in his loins and his power is in the navel of his belly.
¹⁷ His tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together.
¹⁸ His limbs are as strong as copper, his bones as a load of iron.
¹⁹ His is the first of God's ways; [only] his Maker can draw His sword [against him].
²⁰ For the mountains bear food for him, and all the beasts of the field play there.
²¹ Does he lie under the shadows, in the cover of the reeds and the swamp?
²² Do the shadows cover him as his shadow? Do the willows of the brook surround him?
²³ Behold, he plunders the river, and [he] does not harden; he trusts that he will draw the Jordan into his mouth.
²⁴ With His eyes He will take him; with snares He will puncture his nostrils.

In later Jewish writings

In Jewish aprocrypha and pseudepigrapha such as the 2nd century BCE Book of Enoch, Behemoth is the primal unconquerable monster of the land, as Leviathan is the primal monster of the waters of the sea and Ziz the primordial monster of the sky. In the 2nd century BCE 1 Enoch Leviathan lives in "the Abyss", while Behemoth the land-monster lives in an invisible desert east of the garden of Eden (1 Enoch 60:7-8). A Jewish rabbinic legend describes a great battle which will take place between them at the end of time: "...they will interlock with one another and engage in combat, with his horns the Behemoth will gore with strength, the fish [Leviathan] will leap to meet him with his fins, with power. Their Creator will approach them with his mighty sword [and slay them both]." Then, "from the beautiful skin of the Leviathan, God will construct canopies to shelter the righteous, who will eat the meat of the Behemoth and the Leviathan amid great joy and merriment." (Artscroll siddur, p. 719).

Meaning

Leviathan, Behemoth and Ziz

Since the 17th century CE there have been many attempts to identify Behemoth. Some scholars have seen him as a real creature, usually the hippopotamus, although occasionally as the elephant, crocodile, water buffalo^[6] or for some creationists, a dinosaur. The reference to Behemoth's "tail" that "moves like a cedar" (40:17), is a problem for most of these theories, since it cannot easily be identified with the tail of any animal. Some have identified it as the elephant's trunk, but it might instead refer to Behemoth's penis based on another meaning of the Hebrew word "move" which means "extend" and on the second last part of verse 17 describing the sinew around its "stones"—not, as in the translation above, his thighs. The Vulgate, recognising this, uses the word "testiculorum".^[7] A second opinion is that Behemoth is a product of the imagination of the author of Job, a symbol of God's power (and indeed, in verse 24 he is described as having a ring ("snare") through his nose, a sign that he has been tamed by Yahweh).^[1]

Literary references

Classicist philosopher Thomas Hobbes named Long Parliament as Behemoth in his book Behemoth. It accompanies his book of political theory that draws on the lessons of that civil war, the rather more famous Leviathan. It is also the name of a character in Mikhail Bulgakov's novel, The Master and Margarita. He also appears in John Milton’s Paradise Lost (Book VII 470-472): "[… ]Scarce from his mould / Behemoth biggest born of earth upheaved / His vastness: Fleeced the flocks and bleating rose,[ …]" The Behemoth And is mentioned in The Seasons by James Thomson: "[…] behold ! in plaited mail / Behemoth rears his head." […] (Summer). The German émigré Franz Leopold Neumann entitled his 1941 book about National Socialism, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism. The Behemoth is also mentioned in the opera Nixon in China, composed by John Adams, and written by Alice Goodman. At the beginning of the first act it says: "The people are the heroes now, Behemoth pulls the peasants' plow".

"Behemoth" is the title of the second book in Scott Westerfeld's steampunk series for young adults.

See also

Mythology portal

• Akdamut
• Book of Job in Byzantine illuminated manuscripts
• Tarasque

Notes

References

• Metzeger, Bruce M. (ed); Michael D. Coogan (ed) (1993). The Oxford Companion to the Bible. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504645-5. 
• Mitchell, Stephen, 1987. The Book of Job. San Francisco: North Point Press. Cited in R. T. Pennock, 1999, Tower of Babel, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Behemoth

• Leviathan and Behemoth article in the Jewish Encyclopedia
• Putting God on Trial- The Biblical Book of Job contains a major section on the literary use of Behemoth.