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Behemoth and Leviathan: The Lord's Two Exhibits in Job 40-41

When God finally answers Job, he never mentions Job's suffering. He asks questions for four chapters, and he spends the last two of them on two animals — more words on these two than on the sea, the stars and the storehouses of snow combined.

In one sentence: God shows Job two real creatures He made and Job cannot master, to show that He is sovereign over all He made and owes no one an account — so you can rest in who He is when He does not tell you why.

Behemoth and Leviathan were real animals. The Lord points at them, says he made them, and asks Job whether he could hook one or put a leash on it — an argument that means nothing if the creatures are figures of speech. This study works through both chapters: what the Hebrew says about Behemoth's habitat, why the crocodile fails as Leviathan, Scripture's other four Leviathan texts, where the creatures may be attested outside the Bible, and what the Lord was doing by putting two animals where an explanation should have gone.

Key Takeaways

(This section follows the Key Takeaways format — see that page for what each part is for.)

Lessons about Jesus

Job's complaint before the whirlwind was that no one could bring him and God into the same room: "There is no arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both" (Job 9:33, ESV). The Leviathan speech answers it by widening the gap — if no man can lay a hand on a creature God made, no man will lay a hand on God (Job 41:10-11). Paul quotes that exact line at the climax of Romans: "Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?" (Romans 11:35, ESV, quoting Job 41:11). The arbiter Job asked for arrives in the New Testament as a person — "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5, ESV). The God who could not be approached in Job 41 came near in the incarnation of Jesus. So you come to the God no one can stand before through His Son, the mediator Job could not find.

Memory verses

✝️ Job 41:11 (ESV)

11 Who has first given to me, that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.

✝️ Job 42:5 (ESV)

5 I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.

Be Transformed

  • Think. God's answer to the hardest question in the book is a tour of the animal kingdom. Notice what that assumes about you: that seeing who God is settles more than being told why he acted.
  • Attitude. Job's repentance in 42:6 follows no new information about his losses. Nothing in chapters 38-41 explains his children, his health or his property. What changed was the size of the God he was arguing with.
  • Do. Go this week to one thing in creation you cannot control, the sea, a storm, a large animal, and read Job 40:15-19 aloud in front of it. Then say to God what Job said once he had seen Him: "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted" (Job 42:2, ESV).

Prayer

Lord, you answered a suffering man by showing him what you had made, and he stopped arguing. You made Behemoth alongside Job and formed Leviathan to play in the sea, and no one can stand before you who cannot stand before them. Forgive me for the times I have demanded an accounting from you as though I had first given you something you owed back. Thank you that the arbiter Job could not find, you sent — your Son Jesus, who came near where no man could approach. Teach me to say with Job that I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Study outline

Historical and literary context

Job's setting. Job is patriarchal-era wisdom literature — undated, but set before the Mosaic law, among a wealth and lifespan pattern that fits the patriarchal age. The book runs three cycles of speeches between Job and his friends, then Elihu, then the Lord's own speech from the whirlwind (Job 38:1-42:6).

Where 40:15-41:34 sits. The whirlwind speech never answers Job's demand for an explanation of his suffering. It reorients him around the created order he did not make and cannot command: the cosmos (ch. 38), the animal kingdom (ch. 39), and finally two named creatures, Behemoth (40:15-24) and Leviathan (41:1-34).

✝️ Job 38:4-7 (ESV)

4 "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. 5 Who determined its measurements -- surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? 6 On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, 7 when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

The two exhibits end that interrogation, and Job answers: "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted" (Job 42:2, ESV).

A numbering note. Hebrew and English divide these chapters differently. The Leviathan section begins at Hebrew 40:25, which English Bibles number 41:1. References below follow the English numbering, with the Hebrew given where the Hebrew text is under discussion.

Two real creatures

Made in the same world as Job

The Lord introduces Behemoth with a pointing gesture. הִנֵּה־נָא (hinneh-na, "look now") is the presentative particle plus the particle of entreaty — the Hebrew for directing someone's attention to something in front of them. Then he places the creature: אֲשֶׁר־עָשִׂיתִי עִמָּךְ, "which I made immak" (H5973). English versions split on that preposition. The KJV, the JPS and Young read it "which I made with thee"; the ESV, WEB and ASV take it comparatively, "as I made you" / "as well as you." Both senses are available to im, and both put Behemoth and Job in the same relation to God as things he made. The "with thee" reading adds contemporaneity — made in the same act, in the same world Job was standing in.

The argument in Job 41

Job 41 presses the assumption harder, because its argument is a run of questions to which Job already knows the answers. Can you hook him, put a leash on him for your daughters, sell him to merchants, fill his hide with harpoons (41:1-7)? Those are the ordinary things men do to large animals. Verse 9 says a man is undone אֶל־מַרְאָיו (el-mar'av), "at the sight of him," from מַרְאֶה (mar'eh, H4758), "appearance". Men have looked at this creature.

Verse 33 is then a comparison: אֵין־עַל־עָפָר מָשְׁלוֹ, "there is not on the dust his likeness" (moshel, H4915, TWOT 1258c). עַל־עָפָר (al-afar, "on the dust") is where animals walk. The verse ranks Leviathan against everything else on the ground and finds no equal — and a thing that does not exist cannot be ranked.

This shows that God rules creatures as real as Job himself, and He rules you.

A catalogue of real animals

Mart-Jan Paul sets out the same case in Journal of Creation and adds two observations from the surrounding text. Job 39 has just catalogued ordinary animals — the wild donkey, the ostrich, the horse, the hawk — so the two that follow arrive in a sequence of real ones. And the Lord describes appearance and habits, not primordial combat: Behemoth is a grass-eater lying in the shade of river plants (40:15, 21-22), which is not how the creation myths of Israel's neighbours describe their monsters. Paul concludes: "to call them 'mythological' creatures is to do violence to the text and context of Job; therefore, we affirm that these were actual creatures of which Job had knowledge."

Real, but gone from the earth

What the passage never says is that either creature could still be found. Behemoth is placed in Job's world; Psalm 104:26 has Leviathan in the sea at the time the psalm was written; Scripture tracks neither one past that. Neither matches anything alive today, which is why the identification question runs through the fossil record and ancient written accounts.

Behemoth

✝️ Job 40:15-19 (ESV)

15 "Behold, Behemoth, which I made as I made you; he eats grass like an ox. 16 Behold, his strength in his loins, and his power in the muscles of his belly. 17 He makes his tail stiff like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together. 18 His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like bars of iron. 19 "He is the first of the works of God; let him who made him bring near his sword!

Behemoth transliterates Hebrew בְּהֵמוֹת (behemot, H930, TWOT root 208b), an intensive plural of behemah ("beast," H929) functioning as a superlative: the beast of beasts. Verse 19 ranks him: "the first of the works of God." Only his Maker may bring a sword near him.

Why not the hippopotamus

The traditional identification is the hippopotamus, which the ESV Study Bible's note on 40:15 reports as "almost universally so interpreted," reading verses 16-18 as "poetical extravagance." Four details in the passage work against it.

The tail

The tail. A hippopotamus's tail is 35-50 centimetres, short and thick, tapering to a point, and it hangs and wiggles rather than being held stiff. A cedar of Lebanon carries branches ten to twenty metres long. Paul's assessment is that the comparison is to size, and that no reading of the hippopotamus's tail supplies it.

The muscles

The muscles. Verse 16 has Job look at the strength in his loins and the power in the muscles of his belly. A hippopotamus is thickset; the individual muscles are not what a viewer sees.

The sword

The sword. Verse 19 says only his Maker may bring a sword near him, and verse 24 asks whether anyone can take him by the eyes or pierce his nose. Egyptian hunters killed hippopotamuses routinely, and the favoured tactic was to pierce the nose to force the animal to open its mouth — the specific act verse 24 treats as impossible.

Familiarity

Familiarity. Hippopotamus remains have been recovered from Tel Dor in Israel down to the Iron Age, so a writer in that region knew the animal. A description aimed at a hippopotamus would begin with the squat build, the gaping mouth and the incisors. Job 40 mentions none of them.

Habitat: at home in the water

What the passage does press is habitat.

✝️ Job 40:21-23 (ESV)

21 Under the lotus plants he lies, in the shelter of the reeds and in the marsh. 22 For his shade the lotus trees cover him; the willows of the brook surround him. 23 Behold, if the river is turbulent he is not frightened; he is confident though Jordan rushes against his mouth.

Verse 23 has two translation traditions. The Hebrew is הֵן יַעֲשֹׁק נָהָר לֹא יַחְפּוֹז יִבְטַח כִּי־יָגִיחַ יַרְדֵּן אֶל־פִּיהוּ. The KJV made Behemoth the actor — "he drinketh up a river... he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth" — but that requires ashaq (H6231) to mean "drink," a sense it carries nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Its other thirty-odd occurrences run through oppression, extortion and defrauding — "you shall not oppress your neighbor" (Leviticus 19:13), "those who oppress the hired worker" (Malachi 3:5) — and Job himself uses it that way at 10:3.

The majority reading makes the river the actor, and two witnesses support it. Giach (H1518, "burst forth") is the same verb Job 38:8 uses of the sea bursting from the womb. And the Septuagint already read it this way centuries before the Masoretic vowel-pointing: Ἐὰν γένηται πλημμύρα, οὐ μὴ αἰσθηθῇ ("if a flood should come, he will not perceive it"), followed by πέποιθεν, ὅτι προσκρούσει ὁ Ἰορδάνης εἰς τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ — "he is confident that the Jordan will dash against his mouth."

So the picture is a creature lying in moving water, a named river driving against his mouth, unbothered. Whatever Behemoth was, he is at home submerged.

Leviathan

✝️ Job 41:1-7 (ESV)

1 "Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook or press down his tongue with a cord? 2 Can you put a rope in his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook? 3 Will he make many pleas to you? Will he speak to you soft words? 4 Will he make a covenant with you to take him for your servant forever? 5 Will you play with him as with a bird, or will you put him on a leash for your girls? 6 Will traders bargain over him? Will they divide him up among the merchants? 7 Can you fill his skin with harpoons or his head with fishing spears?

Leviathan is לִוְיָתָן (livyatan, H3882, TWOT root 1089b), from a root meaning to twine or coil — the twisted one. TWOT glosses it simply "serpent."

The ESV Study Bible's note on 41:1 suggests the animal "may be the crocodile," adding that the focus is on "whatever powerful creature is being referred to." Biblical Hebrew has no word for crocodile at all, though the animal lived in Canaan — Greek and Latin place names in the region record it — so the identification is a guess about livyatan, not a translation of it. Four features in the chapter rule it out.

Four features against the crocodile

No weapon touches him

No weapon touches him. The chapter states this seven ways.

✝️ Job 41:26-29 (ESV)

26 Though the sword reaches him, it does not avail, nor the spear, the dart, or the javelin. 27 He counts iron as straw, and bronze as rotten wood. 28 The arrow cannot make him flee; for him, sling stones are turned to stubble. 29 Clubs are counted as stubble; he laughs at the rattle of javelins.

Egyptian tomb reliefs show crocodiles taken with harpoons and javelins driven into the neck, where the hard scales stop — the exact implements Job 41:7 says fail against Leviathan.

He cannot be handled, and crocodiles were

He cannot be handled, and crocodiles were. Verses 1-5 ask whether Job could press down his tongue with a cord, put a rope in his nose, take him as a servant, or leash him for his daughters. Papyrus Cha, dated around 1430 BC, depicts a man holding a crocodile under control with a rope. Herodotus records Egyptians at Thebes and Lake Moeris keeping tamed crocodiles, feeding them consecrated food and fitting them with glass and gold ear ornaments and bracelets on the forelegs (Histories II.69). Every impossibility the chapter lists was, for a crocodile, somebody's job.

His range is the open deep

His range is the open deep, not a river. Verse 31 has him boiling מְצוּלָה (metsulah, H4688, "the deep") and יָם (yam, H3220, "the sea"); verse 32 leaves תְּהוֹם (tehom, H8415) white behind him — the word for the deep in Genesis 1:2, "darkness was over the face of the deep" (ESV). Crocodilians, living or fossil, are river and estuary animals.

He has no counterpart

He has no counterpart.

✝️ Job 41:33-34 (ESV)

33 On earth there is not his like, a creature without fear. 34 He sees everything that is high; he is king over all the sons of pride."

Scripture supplies its own category for this creature, and it is not a crocodile:

✝️ Isaiah 27:1 (ESV)

1 In that day the LORD with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.

Isaiah names Leviathan twice as נָחָשׁ (nachash, H5175, "serpent") and once as תַּנִּין (tannin, H8577, TWOT root 2528b) — the word behind "dragon" and "sea monster" in English Bibles. Tannin is not a mythological label. Genesis 1:21 uses it of the great sea creatures God made on the fifth day, and Job himself uses it at 7:12 ("Am I the sea, or a sea monster, that you set a guard over me?", ESV). The Bible's own taxonomy for Leviathan is serpent and dragon.

The Septuagint calls him dragon

The Septuagint translators read it the same way, and they were working before the Masoretic vowel-pointing existed. At Job 40:25 (English 41:1) they did not transliterate the name at all — they wrote δράκοντα (drakonta, G1404, "dragon"). At Isaiah 27:1 they used δράκων three times over, dropping the name Leviathan entirely: ἐπὶ τὸν δράκοντα ὄφιν φεύγοντα, ἐπὶ τὸν δράκοντα ὄφιν σκολιόν, ἀνελεῖ τὸν δράκοντα.

This shows that God is Lord over the one creature on earth with no equal: every weapon fails against it, and He will take up His sword against the dragon in the sea (Isaiah 27:1). Nothing you fear is outside His reach.

The fire

✝️ Job 41:18-21 (ESV)

18 His sneezings flash forth light, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the dawn. 19 Out of his mouth go flaming torches; sparks of fire leap forth. 20 Out of his nostrils comes forth smoke, as from a boiling pot and burning rushes. 21 His breath kindles coals, and a flame comes forth from his mouth.

Commentaries routinely file this under hyperbole. The Hebrew makes that harder: the poet marks his comparisons, and these are not marked.

Six unmarked clauses

Six clauses across these four verses (Hebrew 41:10-13) are plain indicatives with no comparative particle: sneezings flash light, torches go from his mouth, sparks leap out, smoke comes from his nostrils, his breath kindles coals, a flame comes from his mouth. Two clauses in the same span do carry כְּ (ke, "like") — "eyes like the eyelids of the dawn" and smoke "as from a boiling pot and burning rushes" — and both compare appearance, not existence. The smoke is asserted flatly; only how it looks is likened to a boiling pot. The writer does the same thing three verses later with a heart "hard as a stone, hard as the lower millstone" (41:24) and again at 41:31, where the deep boils "like a pot." He knows how to signal a simile and does not signal one for the fire itself.

The setting reinforces it. These verses sit inside an inventory of the creature's body: jaws, teeth, scales, neck, folds of flesh, heart, underside.

The Septuagint and Psalm 18:8

Two things cut the other way.

The Septuagint softened one clause the Hebrew leaves bare. At Job 41:11 (English 41:19) the Greek reads ἐκ στόματος αὐτοῦ ἐκπορεύονται ὡς λαμπάδες καιόμεναι — "out of his mouth proceed as it were burning torches" — inserting a ὡς (hōs, G5613, "as") that the Hebrew does not have. The next verse keeps the smoke as a flat assertion (καπνὸς καμίνου καιομένης, "smoke of a furnace burning"), so the ancient translator was not systematically defusing the passage. One of the six unmarked clauses did read to him as a comparison.

Psalm 18:8 describes God in nearly the same words — "smoke went up from his nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth; glowing coals flamed forth from him" (ESV) — using the same Hebrew terms for smoke, nostril, fire, mouth and coals. God has no nostrils, so this vocabulary carries figurative freight somewhere in Scripture. What distinguishes Job 41 is density and setting: one compressed line inside a storm theophany there, six unmarked clauses inside an anatomical catalogue here.

Nothing alive matches him

The objection everyone raises is that no known animal does this. Verse 33 grants it in advance: "there is not on the dust his likeness." The Lord Himself says so, in the middle of a chapter daring Job to lay a hand on the animal (41:8).

One animal alive today does produce fire chemically. The bombardier beetle (Brachinus) stores hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide in separate reservoirs and combines them in a reaction chamber with catalytic enzymes, firing the result out of its abdomen at around 100°C. Paul cites it as a working demonstration that a body can generate a violent exothermic reaction on purpose, without proposing it as a mechanism for Leviathan. Neither does the text, and neither does this study: Job 41 supplies a report.

Leviathan's other four appearances

The name occurs five times in the Old Testament, and Job 41 is the longest treatment.

Job 3:8 — Job's own earlier use, in his opening curse on the day of his birth: "Let those curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up Leviathan" (ESV). Job invokes the creature as the last thing anyone would want roused. The Lord picks the name back up in chapter 41 and asks Job whether he could rouse it himself (41:10).

Psalm 104:26 — a creation psalm, cataloguing the fifth day.

✝️ Psalm 104:24-26 (ESV)

24 O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. 25 Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great. 26 There go the ships, and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.

"Formed" is יָצַר (yatsar, H3335, TWOT root 898), the verb used of God forming man from the dust in Genesis 2:7 and forming every beast of the field in Genesis 2:19. The Septuagint uses ἔπλασας here, the same verb it uses of God forming Adam. Leviathan is placed in the psalm's inventory of made things, alongside the ships and the innumerable sea creatures — and the ESV Study Bible's own note on Psalm 104:25-26 files it among the "great sea creatures" of Genesis 1:21, which is tannin.

Psalm 74:14 — the hardest of the four.

✝️ Psalm 74:13-14 (ESV)

13 You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. 14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.

The plural "heads" and the exodus setting (v.13's divided sea, v.15's dried streams) make this a poetic treatment of God's victory over Egypt rather than a zoological note, and the ESV Study Bible reads it as a figure for Egypt. A name used for a real animal is also used for a national enemy — which is how tannin works too: Ezekiel calls Pharaoh "the great dragon that lies in the midst of his streams" (Ezekiel 29:3, ESV).

Isaiah 27:1 — quoted above: the name applied to an enemy God will destroy in the day of the Lord.

Taken together, the five texts do not resolve into a single genre. Two are plain creature descriptions (Job 41, Psalm 104), two are national or eschatological figures (Psalm 74, Isaiah 27), and one is a curse formula (Job 3). The one thing every text holds in common is control: the creature is made, formed, crushed, punished, or set to play, and always by God. This shows that God is sovereign over Leviathan in every sense the name carries: He formed the animal, crushed Egypt and will slay the dragon in that day.

Where they might be attested

Two lines of external evidence bear on creatures the Bible describes and no one has seen: bones, and older writing. Neither settles the identification.

The fossil record

The fossil record. Young-earth researchers have proposed candidates for both. Allan Steel argued in Journal of Creation (2001) that Behemoth was a sauropod, on the strength of the cedar tail and the elimination of every living alternative; Paul, working the same passage, names the apatosaur, brachiosaur and ultrasaur as fitting the size and the tail, and Nigersaurus as fitting the grass-eating of 40:15 in particular. For Leviathan, Peter Brooker proposed Sarcosuchus imperator (Journal of Creation, 2005) — a twelve-metre armoured crocodilian with an unusual bulbous cavity at the end of the snout — and Simon Turpin's 2020 survey for Answers in Genesis runs through Kronosaurus, Liopleurodon, Sarcosuchus, Mosasaurus and Plesiosaurus and settles on none, concluding that Leviathan "may be an extinct creature we currently do not know about."

Each declines to close the case, and Paul gives the reason: new extinct kinds keep being found, and Job 40-41 is not a scientific description. Mainstream paleontology dates all of these animals to the Mesozoic and places no human alongside them — the dispute over that dating is the same one the companion study lays out on both sides, and nothing in Job 40-41 settles it.

Older writing

Older writing. The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, on tablets from Ras Shamra dated to roughly the thirteenth century BC, describes Lotan (ltn) as bathan bariach ("fleeing serpent") and bathan aqallatan ("twisting serpent"). Isaiah 27:1 pairs the same two roots — bariach and aqallaton — around the same name. That is an independent Near Eastern attestation of Leviathan under near-identical epithets, older than Isaiah, and it tells us Job's first readers recognised the category the Lord was invoking.

Where the argument stops

Where the argument stops. Popular treatments extend this to the worldwide spread of dragon legend as proof that such creatures were seen by men. That step fails for two reasons.

The most frequently cited parallels are not independent. Calvert Watkins' How to Kill a Dragon (Oxford, 1995) reconstructs the serpent-slaying myth of Greek, Vedic, Hittite, Celtic, Germanic and Iranian tradition as a single inherited Proto-Indo-European formula, traceable through shared poetic phrasing — one family tree.

And fire-breathing does not travel with the motif. Australia's Rainbow Serpent is a water being and Mesoamerica's feathered serpent is neither reptilian in the European sense nor fiery; the traditions furthest from the Indo-European family are largely the ones without the fire. (The Chinese dragon complicates this: it governs water and cloud, but fire-breathing forms are attested, so Paul cites it as evidence and this study does not treat the pattern as clean.) Adrienne Mayor's The First Fossil Hunters (Princeton) also documents a mechanism by which real remains generate legendary beasts with no living encounter behind them — Scythian miners meeting Protoceratops skeletons in the Gobi, and the griffin legend that followed.

Paul himself flags the same hazard in a footnote: careful examination of these claims is necessary, because inaccurate examples have been used in the past.

None of the external material is load-bearing. Job 40-41 asserts the creatures existed; bones and older writing are where you look next, not what the claim rests on.

What the two exhibits are for

The Lord's argument depends on Job recognising that he did not make them and cannot subdue them. Behemoth is ranked first among God's works and made alongside Job himself; Leviathan is stated to have no equal on earth. Both close a four-chapter demonstration that the God Job wanted to cross-examine governs a creation Job cannot handle.

Then comes the turn. Having established that no one can stand before Leviathan, the Lord asks: "Who then is he who can stand before me? Who has first given to me, that I should repay him?" (Job 41:10-11, ESV). The argument runs from creature to Creator.

That is the same move Paul names in Romans 1:20 — God's "eternal power and divine nature... clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made" (ESV) — acted out narratively centuries before Paul states the principle. Paul goes further and quotes the Leviathan speech directly. Job 41:11 sits inside the doxology that closes Romans 11: "Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things" (Romans 11:35-36, ESV). The question God asked from the whirlwind became the question Paul asks about salvation.

This is the doctrine of God's sovereignty, and Job 42:2 states it: "no purpose of yours can be thwarted." God owes no one, because no one has first given to Him; everything He gives, salvation included, is grace. So when He does not explain your suffering, you can answer as Job did: "now my eye sees you."

For the broader argument about what creation reveals about its maker, see What Creation Declares: General Revelation in Romans 1:19-23.

Discussion questions

  1. The language. Isaiah 27:1 calls Leviathan תַּנִּין (tannin), Genesis 1:21's word for the "great sea creatures". Where does that place him?
  2. The text in its context. Job 41:1-7 asks whether Job could hook or leash Leviathan. What does God's argument need Leviathan to be?
  3. Christ. Job wanted an "arbiter" (Job 9:33); Paul names "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). How does Jesus stand where Job 41:10 says no one can?
  4. The hard part. Job 41:19-21 states Leviathan's fire plainly; Psalm 18:8 gives God "devouring fire from his mouth". How do you read the two together?
  5. Be transformed. Job said "now my eye sees you" (Job 42:5) without learning why he suffered. What would it take for you to say that over an unexplained loss?
Group study sheet for a 40-minute group: two A4 sheets, or one with the guided path

The point, the passage, the questions and the response, from this study. Print on both sides of two A4 sheets, flipping on the long edge. While this block is open, printing the page prints the sheet; close it to print the study.

Group study · 40 minutes

Behemoth and Leviathan: The Lord's Two Exhibits in Job 40-41

Job 40:15-24; Job 41:1-34

The point God shows Job two real creatures He made and Job cannot master, to show that He is sovereign over all He made and owes no one an account — so you can rest in who He is when He does not tell you why.

0–5min

Ask: what comes to mind when you hear Behemoth and Leviathan? Hear a few answers before anyone reads.

5–12minRead it aloud BSB

Job 40:15-24 15Look at Behemoth, which I made along with you. He feeds on grass like an ox. 16See the strength of his loins and the power in the muscles of his belly. 17His tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are tightly knit. 18His bones are tubes of bronze; his limbs are rods of iron. 19He is the foremost of God’s works; only his Maker can draw the sword against him. 20The hills yield him their produce, while all the beasts of the field play nearby. 21He lies under the lotus plants, hidden among the reeds of the marsh. 22The lotus plants conceal him in their shade; the willows of the brook surround him. 23Though the river rages, Behemoth is unafraid; he remains secure, though the Jordan surges to his mouth. 24Can anyone capture him as he looks on, or pierce his nose with a snare?’’

Job 41:1-34 1“Can you pull in Leviathan with a hook or tie down his tongue with a rope? 2Can you put a cord through his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook? 3Will he beg you for mercy or speak to you softly? 4Will he make a covenant with you to take him as a slave for life? 5Can you pet him like a bird or put him on a leash for your maidens? 6Will traders barter for him or divide him among the merchants? 7Can you fill his hide with harpoons or his head with fishing spears? 8If you lay a hand on him, you will remember the battle and never repeat it! 9Surely hope of overcoming him is false. Is not the sight of him overwhelming? 10No one is so fierce as to rouse Leviathan. Then who is able to stand against Me? 11Who has given to Me that I should repay him? Everything under heaven is Mine. 12I cannot keep silent about his limbs, his power and graceful form. 13Who can strip off his outer coat? Who can approach him with a bridle? 14Who can open his jaws, ringed by his fearsome teeth? 15His rows of scales are his pride, tightly sealed together. 16One scale is so near to another that no air can pass between them. 17They are joined to one another; they clasp and cannot be separated. 18His snorting flashes with light, and his eyes are like the rays of dawn. 19Firebrands stream from his mouth; fiery sparks shoot forth! 20Smoke billows from his nostrils as from a boiling pot over burning reeds. 21His breath sets coals ablaze, and flames pour from his mouth. 22Strength resides in his neck, and dismay leaps before him. 23The folds of his flesh are tightly joined; they are firm and immovable. 24His chest is as hard as a rock, as hard as a lower millstone! 25When Leviathan rises up, the mighty are terrified; they withdraw before his thrashing. 26The sword that reaches him has no effect, nor does the spear or dart or arrow.

Also read: Job 41:1-34 from 41:27

12–25minLook closer
What does it say?
What did it mean to them?
What does it mean for us?
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Behemoth and Leviathan: The Lord's Two Exhibits in Job 40-41

The study in brief
  1. Historical and literary context. Where Job 40-41 sits in the whirlwind speech, and the Hebrew chapter numbering.
  2. Two real creatures. The Hebrew of 40:15 and 41:9, 33, and why the Lord's questions assume living animals.
  3. Behemoth. The beast of beasts, four details set against the hippopotamus, and his river habitat in 40:23.
  4. Leviathan. The twisting one, four features set against the crocodile, and Isaiah's and the Septuagint's "dragon".
  5. The fire. The six unmarked clauses of 41:18-21, the Septuagint and Psalm 18:8, and the bombardier beetle.
  6. Leviathan's other four appearances. Job 3:8, Psalm 104:26, Psalm 74:14 and Isaiah 27:1.
  7. Where they might be attested. Fossil candidates, the Ugaritic Lotan, and the limits of the dragon-legend argument.
  8. What the two exhibits are for. From creature to Creator, Job 41:11 in Romans 11, and God's sovereignty.
Notes
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Behemoth and Leviathan: The Lord's Two Exhibits in Job 40-41

12–24minStep 1 · Historical and literary context

1The text in its context. Job 41:1-7 asks whether Job could hook or leash Leviathan. What does God's argument need Leviathan to be?

2Christ. Job wanted an "arbiter" (Job 9:33); Paul names "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). How does Jesus stand where Job 41:10 says no one can?

Step 2 · Two real creatures
Step 3 · Behemoth
24–29minStep 4 · Leviathan

3The language. Isaiah 27:1 calls Leviathan תַּנִּין (tannin), Genesis 1:21's word for the "great sea creatures". Where does that place him?

29–35minStep 5 · The fire

4The hard part. Job 41:19-21 states Leviathan's fire plainly; Psalm 18:8 gives God "devouring fire from his mouth". How do you read the two together?

Step 6 · Leviathan's other four appearances
Step 7 · Where they might be attested
Step 8 · What the two exhibits are for
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Behemoth and Leviathan: The Lord's Two Exhibits in Job 40-41

35–40minBe transformed

5Be transformed. Job said "now my eye sees you" (Job 42:5) without learning why he suffered. What would it take for you to say that over an unexplained loss?

  • Think. God's answer to the hardest question in the book is a tour of the animal kingdom. Notice what that assumes about you: that seeing who God is settles more than being told why he acted.
  • Attitude. Job's repentance in 42:6 follows no new information about his losses. Nothing in chapters 38-41 explains his children, his health or his property. What changed was the size of the God he was arguing with.
  • Do. Go this week to one thing in creation you cannot control, the sea, a storm, a large animal, and read Job 40:15-19 aloud in front of it. Then say to God what Job said once he had seen Him: "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted" (Job 42:2, ESV).
Memory verse

Who has first given to me, that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.

Job 41:11 (ESV)
Pray together

Lord, you answered a suffering man by showing him what you had made, and he stopped arguing. You made Behemoth alongside Job and formed Leviathan to play in the sea, and no one can stand before you who cannot stand before them. Forgive me for the times I have demanded an accounting from you as though I had first given you something you owed back. Thank you that the arbiter Job could not find, you sent — your Son Jesus, who came near where no man could approach. Teach me to say with Job that I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Notes
The whole study, with every verse a tap awayhttps://the-way.lewy.au/god/behemoth-and-leviathan/
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Group study · step by step

Behemoth and Leviathan: The Lord's Two Exhibits in Job 40-41

Job 40:15-24; Job 41:1-34

Open Ask: what comes to mind when you hear Behemoth and Leviathan? Hear a few answers before anyone reads.

Read it aloud Job 40:15-24; Job 41:1-34

Step 1Historical and literary context — Where Job 40-41 sits in the whirlwind speech, and the Hebrew chapter numbering.

1The text in its context. Job 41:1-7 asks whether Job could hook or leash Leviathan. What does God's argument need Leviathan to be?

2Christ. Job wanted an "arbiter" (Job 9:33); Paul names "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). How does Jesus stand where Job 41:10 says no one can?

Step 2Two real creatures — The Hebrew of 40:15 and 41:9, 33, and why the Lord's questions assume living animals.
Step 3Behemoth — The beast of beasts, four details set against the hippopotamus, and his river habitat in 40:23.
Step 4Leviathan — The twisting one, four features set against the crocodile, and Isaiah's and the Septuagint's "dragon".Key verses: Job 41:1-7; Job 41:26-29; Job 41:33-34

3The language. Isaiah 27:1 calls Leviathan תַּנִּין (tannin), Genesis 1:21's word for the "great sea creatures". Where does that place him?

Step 5The fire — The six unmarked clauses of 41:18-21, the Septuagint and Psalm 18:8, and the bombardier beetle.

4The hard part. Job 41:19-21 states Leviathan's fire plainly; Psalm 18:8 gives God "devouring fire from his mouth". How do you read the two together?

Step 6Leviathan's other four appearances — Job 3:8, Psalm 104:26, Psalm 74:14 and Isaiah 27:1.
Step 7Where they might be attested — Fossil candidates, the Ugaritic Lotan, and the limits of the dragon-legend argument.
Step 8What the two exhibits are for — From creature to Creator, Job 41:11 in Romans 11, and God's sovereignty.
Be transformed

5Be transformed. Job said "now my eye sees you" (Job 42:5) without learning why he suffered. What would it take for you to say that over an unexplained loss?

  • Think. God's answer to the hardest question in the book is a tour of the animal kingdom. Notice what that assumes about you: that seeing who God is settles more than being told why he acted.
  • Attitude. Job's repentance in 42:6 follows no new information about his losses. Nothing in chapters 38-41 explains his children, his health or his property. What changed was the size of the God he was arguing with.
  • Do. Go this week to one thing in creation you cannot control, the sea, a storm, a large animal, and read Job 40:15-19 aloud in front of it. Then say to God what Job said once he had seen Him: "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted" (Job 42:2, ESV).
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Behemoth and Leviathan: The Lord's Two Exhibits in Job 40-41

The point God shows Job two real creatures He made and Job cannot master, to show that He is sovereign over all He made and owes no one an account — so you can rest in who He is when He does not tell you why.

The whole study, with every verse a tap awayhttps://the-way.lewy.au/god/behemoth-and-leviathan/
Page 2 of 2 · print double-sided, flip on long edgeScripture: BSB, public domain · ESV® © 2001 Crossway, used by permission
  • ESV Bible (Crossway) — primary translation quoted throughout.
  • Mart-Jan Paul, "Behemoth and leviathan in the book of Job," Journal of Creation 24(3):94-100 (2010) — the principal secondary source for this study. Paul is Professor of Old Testament at the Christelijke Hogeschool Ede and at the Evangelical Theological Faculty, Leuven. Source of the case that both creatures were real animals Job knew of, the detailed arguments against the hippopotamus and crocodile identifications, the Herodotus and Papyrus Cha material, the bombardier beetle as a precedent for chemical fire, and the caution that inaccurate examples have been used in this field before.
  • ESV Study Bible (Crossway, 2016) — notes on Job 40:15, 41:1, 41:9-11, 41:24, Psalm 74:14 and Psalm 104:25-26, consulted for the majority hippopotamus/crocodile identifications, from which this study departs on both.
  • TWOT (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, Harris, Archer & Waltke) — roots and glosses for behemot (H930, root 208b), livyatan (H3882, root 1089b), tannin (H8577, root 2528b), nachash (H5175, root 1347a) and yatsar (H3335, root 898).
  • MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets (WLC, Clear Bible, CC BY 4.0) and the Westminster Leningrad Codex — Hebrew text and morphology for Job 40-41, including the simile-marking analysis of Hebrew 41:10-13 and the ashaq (H6231) concordance.
  • Brenton Septuagint (public domain) — the LXX readings of Job 40:23, Job 40:25, Job 41:11-12, Psalm 103:26 (MT 104:26) and Isaiah 27:1.
  • Ugaritic Baal Cycle (KTU 1.5, Ras Shamra, c. 13th century BC) — Lotan as "fleeing serpent" and "twisting serpent," cited for the shared epithets with Isaiah 27:1.
  • Calvert Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics (Oxford, 1995) — the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European serpent-slaying formula, cited for why widely separated dragon traditions are not independent witnesses.
  • Adrienne Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters (Princeton) — fossil remains as a documented origin for legendary creatures.
  • Allan K. Steel, "Could Behemoth have been a dinosaur?" Journal of Creation 15(2):42-45 (2001) — the sauropod proposal for Behemoth, argued from the cedar tail.
  • Peter Brooker, "A new candidate for Leviathan?" Journal of Creation 19(2):14-16 (2005) — the Sarcosuchus imperator proposal.
  • Simon Turpin, "Drawing Out the Biblical Leviathan" (Answers in Genesis, 2020) — surveys the extinct-creature candidates and declines to settle on one, concluding Job 41 "certainly describes Leviathan as a real creature that only the God of creation could master."
  • Herodotus, Histories 2.68-69 — the tamed and ornamented crocodiles of Thebes and Lake Moeris, and the hunting of crocodiles at Elephantine; cited via Paul and checked against the text.
  • OpenBible.info cross-reference data (CC BY).