Leviathan and behemoth

[TheMarriedKnight]

What we’re the leviathan, behemoth and Ziz exactly? What is thier story? I would love to discuss this. By the description in the Bible, they sound like creatures you see in an anime.

 

[Mythicalbio]

Great sea monsters (well, Behemoth isn’t from the sea, but you get the idea) inherited from ANE mythology.

Psalm 74:
12 But God has been my king from long ago,
working salvation in the midst of the earth.
13 You split open the sea by your strength;
You broke the heads of the sea monsters in the waters.
14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
you gave him as food to the desert dwelling creatures.
15 You split open spring and wadi.[i]
You dried up ever-flowing rivers.

Leviathan in particular is from Lotan: Lotan - Wikipedia

I believe the Anchor Bible Commentary and Dictionary of Demons and Deities in the bible have more information.

 

[Sundiver]

Many people have been having dreams about the bible leviathans lately. Several videos on the internet of people describing dreams of leviathan. Although, this is private revelation.
I’ve been looking into this as well.
Some say they are allegories for the forces of the world such as governments attacking one another. I don’t know much about it. They give me the impression of power and something enormous that rises from the depths of darkness. The serpent of the bible is usually synonymous with evil.
Leviathan survived the flood.

 

[Aulef]

They are very misterious animals from the past.

Some say behemoth was a large reptile with strong tail such as the diplodocus and the leviathan was actually a dragon (fire breath and everything).

The most important when you read about these animals in the OT is their temperament and power. Even though they are the most intimidating animals in Sacred Scriptures (each in its specific way), Mighty God clearly shows He is in control of them

 

[BartholomewB]

The mysterious Hebrew words behemoth and leviathan both designate monsters or wild beasts of some unspecified kind. The Vulgate retains the Hebrew words untranslated, and from there they have passed into most English Bibles. Curiously, however, the Septuagint doesn’t use either of them, giving Greek words instead. Behemoth, which occurs only once in the Bible (Job 40:10), appears in the Septuagint as therion, a common word that can mean a wild animal of any kind. Leviathan occurs six times, and in five of them it is translated as drakon, dragon. In the one remaining verse (Job 3:8) it appears as ketos, the same word that appears in the “whale” episode in Jonah 2:1-11. In the NT it occurs just once, in the Jonah context, in Matt 12:40.

 

[Montrose]

From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

BEHEMOTH, is generally translated by “great beasts”; in its wider signification it includes all mammals living on earth, but in the stricter sense is applied to domesticated quadrupeds at large. However in Job, xl, 10, where it is left untranslated and considered as a proper name, it indicates a particular animal. The description of this animal has long puzzled the commentators. Many of them now admit that it represents the hippopotamus, so well known to the ancient Egyptians; it might possibly correspond as well to the rhinoceros.

LEVIATHAN.—The word Leviathan (Hebrew, liweyathan), which occurs six times in the Hebrew Bible, seems to have puzzled not a little all ancient translators. The D.V. has kept this name, Job, iii, 8; xl, 20; Is., xxvii, 1; it is rendered by dragon Ps. lxxiii (Hebr., lxxiv), 14, and ciii (Hebr., civ), 26; The word leviathan means: (I) crocodile (Job, xl, 20 and Ps. lxxiii, 14); (2) a sea-monster (Ps. ciii, 26, Is., xxvii, 1); (3) possibly the Draco constellation (Job, iii, 8).

 

[BartholomewB]

The Russian language has taken over the Hebrew word behemoth, in the form бегемот (begemot), as one of the terms for hippopotamus, alongside гиппопотам (gippopotam).

 

[White_Tree]

The Leviathan (לויתן) is a compound word consisting of Levi (לוי, one of the sons of Jacob, and ancestor of the tribe of Levites, the priests of Israel) and Tan (תן, “dragon,” “whale,” or “sea-serpent,” from the same root as the word Tanyn, “crocodile”).

So one meaning of the Leviathan is the dragon priest, or the crocodile priest, that is, a priest with power over the (symbolic) waters.

In the Torah, that priest is Moses. Thus, it says in the Zohar:

And you support yourself by your sage’s statement more than all of them, since you are the Leviathan of the sea of the Torah. For the master of all fishes is called Leviathan, named after the Torah of which it says, “for they are a graceful garland for your head” (Proverbs 1:9). By you, “Hashem, You preserve man and beast” (Psalms 36:6). Of man, it has been said, “when a man dies in a tent” (Numbers 19:14), and the sages of the Mishnah have stated that the Torah is maintained only by whoever is willing to die for it, death being no other than poverty. ‘Beast’ refers to the ignorant, who are submissive like horses and mules to the sages of the Mishnah.

In the meantime the Holy Luminary came. The Faithful Shepherd opened and said, Mishnah sages, who is the Leviathan? The Holy Luminary answered him, it is he whose grade is the Central Pillar and a righteous man of whom it says that we consider his body, and member of the covenant, as one. And he grows in that sea, which is supernal Ima, which is a sea where the Holy One, blessed be He, is unified in 25 and 25 letters [The Shema and the prayer “Blessed be…”], the numerical value of which is that of ‘yam’ [“sea”], and who is in it? The Faithful Shepherd said, surely this Leviathan stands on the beach and the world is poised on his fins, [as this Leviathan] is, “the righteous is an everlasting foundation” (Proverbs 10:25). The Holy Luminary said, Blessed is your portion, Faithful Shepherd. – Zohar, Ki Tetze, 66-67