Job 41

It’s unclear what the Leviathan was. Based on the description in this chapter, many guess it was a crocodile. Others suggest a hippopotamus or an elephant. If we take the description literally, it matches no animal that we know. But if we take some of it as colorful metaphor, such as the description of it exhaling fire, we might be able to associate it most easily with the crocodile. That’s our best guess. Whatever it was, we won’t give it as a gift to any friend or relative we want to keep. There was an ancient myth in Canaan, in what became the Jewish nation, that a seven-headed monster creature lived in the sea: Leviathan. The name shows up in Job 3:8; 41:1 and in Isaiah 27:1. The psalm writer in Psalm 74:14 uses the name to argue that God is stronger than the strongest creatures we can imagine. It’s unclear if Jews of ancient times believed the stories. But they lived by the Mediterranean Sea and they seemed to prefer herding and farming to sea travel or saltwater fishing. Phoenicia in what is now Lebanon was the seafaring nation. Israel seemed to lean more toward sea-fearing.

Fire-breathing? Sounds like a dragon from a book or a movie. Except they don’t seem to be real. Perhaps the writer was figuratively describing the furious snort of a ticked-off croc, spraying water like flames in a flamethrower.

A fire made from quickly burning dried reeds can hit 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1093 Celsius). Coal ignites at 572 degrees Fahrenheit (300 Celsius) and can reach 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1371 Celsius).

The word is massa in Hebrew, related to the English word “missile.” It’s also related to another Hebrew word, nasa, which means to lift or to carry something. Bible scholars often translate the word as “dart.” But it’s uncertain what the weapon was. Common guesses are that it was a spear or a javelin, which is a shorter spear. Or the weapon may have been something like a knife blade or arrow tip thrown as a short spear or a javelin. It wasn’t likely the darts we throw at pictures of our boss in a bullseye.

A threshing sled was a wooden board embedded with rows of rocks or metal. An animal such as a donkey or an ox would drag the board over stalks of grains such as wheat. This shook the grain kernels loose from the stalks and the kernels fell to the threshing floor, which was usually a flat rock.