Behemoth
Behemoth (Hebrew בהמות, behemot; Arabic بهيموث bahīmūth, or بهموت bahamūt), Template:PronEng or, /bɛɪəmɔθ/ in some translations of the Bible, is a biblical creature mentioned in the Book of Job, 40:15-24. The word is most likely a plural form of בהמה (bəhēmāh), meaning beast or large animal. It may be an example of pluralis excellentiae, a Hebrew method of expressing greatness by pluralizing a noun; it thus implies that Behemoth is the largest and most powerful animal ever to exist. Metaphorically, the name has come to be used for any extremely large or powerful entity.
Characteristics
The text from the Book of Job 40 (Judaica Press Bible) is as follows:
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 hardens like a cedar; the sinews of his tendons 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.
The passage describes Behemoth in this way: it was created along with man (40:15a), it is herbivorous (40:15b), it has strong muscles and bones, and it lives in the swamps (40:21).
In Jewish belief, 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. There is a legend that the Leviathan and the Behemoth shall hold a battle at the end of the world. The two will finally kill each other, and the surviving men will feast on their meat. According to midrash recording traditions, it is impossible for anyone to kill a behemoth except for the person who created it, in this case the God of the Hebrews. A later Jewish haggadic tradition furthermore holds that at the banquet at the end of the world, the behemoth will be served up along with the Leviathan and Ziz.
Behemoth also appears in the Apocryphal Book of Enoch, giving the following description of this monster's origins there mentioned as being male, as opposed to the female Leviathan:
- "And that day will two monsters be parted, one monster, a female named Leviathan in order to dwell in the abyss of the ocean over the fountains of water; and (the other), a male called Behemoth, which holds his chest in an invisible desert whose name is Dundayin, east of the garden of Eden." - 1 Enoch 60:7-8
There is another Jewish hymn recited on the festival of Shavuot (celebrating the giving of the Torah), known as Akdamut, wherein it says: "...The sport with the Leviathan and the ox (Behemoth)...When 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]." Thus, "from the beautiful skin of the Leviathan, God will construct canopies to shelter the righteous, who will eat the meat of the Behemoth [ox] and the Leviathan amid great joy and merriment, at a huge banquet that will be given for them." Some rabbinical commentators say these accounts are allegorical (Artscroll siddur, p. 719), or symbolic of the end of conflict.
Meaning
Many have interpreted Behemoth as a mythical animal. However, some have attempted to identify it with real animals. In the book of Job, both Behemoth and Leviathan are listed alongside a number of mundane animals, such as goats, eagles, and hawks, leading many Christian scholars to surmise that Behemoth and Leviathan may also be mundane creatures.
Suggested animals include the water buffalo, rhinoceros, crocodile, and the elephant, but the most common suggestion is the hippopotamus.[1] Some readers also identify a hippopotamus in Isaiah's bahamot negeb or "beasts of the south" (30:6).
Others disagree with these identifications, pointing to the fact that the animal's tail "moves like a cedar" (40:17), an unlikely description for any of these animals. Scholars maintaining identification with the elephant say that "tail" could describe an elephant's trunk.[2] Moreover, some[who?] suggest that "tail" is a euphemism for male genitalia. Support for this is 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" (the Vulgate uses the word "testiculorum").[2]
Young Earth Creationist identification
Some Young Earth Creationists propose that the Behemoth is a dinosaur. Some sort of sauropod is usually proposed since large sauropods had tails "like a cedar". Adherents of the sauropod-behemoth viewpoint hold that the further descriptions given in Job (i.e., bone strength equaling bronze and iron; the use of Hebrew plural to describe a singular specimen), along with the attributive "chief of the ways of God," and the description "like a cedar" (זְנָבוֹ כְמוֹ-אָרֶז z'navo kamo arez) to describe the tail itself point to an animal of immense proportions; hence a sauropod or equivalent. Some however argue that the references to a cedar-like tail refer to bristles resembling the cedar's needle-like leaves which are present on the tails of elephants and hippopotamus.[3]
Critics argue that according to the fossil record, and the spoon or pencil-shaped teeth of the sauropods themselves, sauropods were tree-browsers that lived 225 million years ago, and went extinct some 65 million years ago. Furthermore, they cite that the earliest grass fossils date to the late Cretaceous,[4] at which time the sauropods were already in decline; as such, critics insist that Sauropods would pre-date the appearance and rise of both people and grasses.
Critics also note that, according to the Biblical text, the Behemoth is said to eat grass in the manner of an ox, meaning it would chew cud; a requirement of such behaviour is the possession of molar teeth, an attribute sauropods lacked. The spoon or pencil-shaped teeth of sauropods allowed them to pull vegetation into their mouths, then to be swallowed. It may also be noted that the hippopotamus does not chew cud as it is not a ruminant artiodactyl. Critics also argue that the description of the creature possessing a navel (Job 40:16) in the King James Version also contradicts the sauropod hypothesis, because sauropods were oviparous.
In response to these objections, creationists[who?] argue that the Hebrew term used in Job for ox (baqar) can denote any classification of (presumably domesticated) herding animals that were common at the time of writing.[citation needed] According to Strong,[5] the Hebrew word ׁשר (shôr) means a twisted string, specifically the umbilical cord. Shôr also has a figurative meaning as the centre of strength. More recent translations such as the New American Standard Bible state "Behold now, his strength in his loins and his power in the muscles of his belly" (Job 40:16).[6]
Other cultures
The Hebrew behemoth is sometimes equated with the Persian Hadhayosh, as the Leviathan is with the Kar and the Ziz with the Simurgh. The Arabic behemoth is known by the name Bahamut, a vast fish that supports the earth. Bahamut is sometimes described as having a head resembling a hippopotamus or elephant. In Russian and Ukrainian, behemoth (бегемот) means hippopotamus.
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.
See also
Notes
- ^ Metzeger & Coogan (1993) Oxford Companion to the Bible, p76.
- ^ a b Mitchell (1987)
- ^ Bright, Michael (2006). Beasts of the Field: The Revealing Natural History of Animals in the Bible. p. 346. ISBN 1861058314.
- ^ The Earliest Remains of Grasses in the Fossil Record
- ^ "Strong's Concordance"
- ^ NASB - Job 40:15-24
References
- Metzeger, Bruce M. (ed) (1993). The Oxford Companion to the Bible. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504645-5.
{{cite book}}:|first=has generic name (help); Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - 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
- 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.