Psalm 104

Leviathan often shows up in ancient stories as a vicious sea monster. Here, it’s just a big, wet animal having fun in the water. 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 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. In fairness, they didn’t have a natural harbor on the coast. King Herod the Great, a thousand years after King David, built a huge harbor at Caesarea, north of what is now Tel Aviv.

The Hebrew word can mean: wind, spirit, breath. It’s the same word used to describe God’s work in Creation: “God’s Spirit cruised through the darkness, above the water” (Genesis 1:2). It’s the word used to describe the death of people and animals during the Flood: “If it lived on land and drew a breath it died” (Genesis 7:22). Even in New Testament times, wind and breath symbolized life. “Jesus breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ (John 20:22). It’s hard to imagine Jesus going up to each disciple, blowing into the man’s face, and telling him to receive the Holy Spirit—even though wind will be associated with the Spirit’s arrival (Acts 2:2). But the image, whether literal or figurative, sounds very much like what was going on in the Creation story. “The LORD God made a man from the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath that brought him to life” (Genesis 2:7). One suggestion some scholars make is that just as God blew the breath of life into human beings (whether literally or figuratively), Jesus blew the breath of eternal life into the disciples, through the gift of the Holy Spirit. This did not necessarily mark the beginning of God’s new creation, launched by the resurrection of Jesus after he conquered death. But it may have marked the beginning of humanity’s role in God’s new creation.