Job 40:17

• After listing natural animals, God described Behemoth and "Leviathan" as creatures humans cannot control (39:1–30; 40:15–24; 41:1–34). Job could not control the wild donkey or ox (39:5–12; 40:15–24). However, God created and could control them, and Job had to accept this fact (41:2).

• Here, Behemoth appears to be a natural creature:

1. It is an animal God made, just as he made Job (40:15).

2. It is not a fierce predator but eats grass like an ox (40:15).

3. It is in a poem about God’s creation of the natural world, not in a myth about the world's formation. Most commentators think Behemoth is the hippopotamus, a large, grass-eating animal (40:15–19). It rests in the river among lotus plants and reeds (40:21). Like the wild ox, Behemoth is strong (40:16–18, 24; 39:11). Yet it is mostly peaceful (40:20–23).

like a cedar--As the tempest bends the cedar, so it can move its smooth thick tail [UMBREIT]. But the cedar implies straightness and length, such as do not apply to the river horse's short tail, but perhaps to an extinct species of animal (see on Job 40:15).

stones--rather, "thighs."

wrapped--firmly twisted together, like a thick rope.

God, for the further proving of his own power and disproving of Job's pretensions, concludes his discourse with the description of two vast and mighty animals, far exceeding man in bulk and strength, one he calls behemoth, the other leviathan. In these verses we have the former described. "Behold now behemoth, and consider whether thou art able to contend with him who made that beast and gave him all the power he has, and whether it is not thy wisdom rather to submit to him and make thy peace with him." Behemoth signifies beasts in general, but must here be meant of some one particular species. Some understand it of the bull; others of an amphibious animal, well known (they say) in Egypt, called the river-horse (hippopotamus), living among the fish in the river Nile, but coming out to feed upon the earth. But I confess I see no reason to depart from the ancient and most generally received opinion, that it is the elephant that is here described, which is a very strong stately creature, of very large stature above any other, of wonderful sagacity, and of so great a reputation in the animal kingdom that among so many four-footed beasts as we have had the natural history of (ch. 38 and 39) we can scarcely suppose this should be omitted. Observe,
I. The description here given of the behemoth.
1. His body is very strong and well built. His strength is in his loins, Job 40:16. His bones, compared with those of other creatures, are like bars of iron, Job 40:18. His back-bone is so strong that, though his tail be not large, yet he moves it like a cedar, with a commanding force, Job 40:17. Some understand it of the trunk of the elephant, for the word signifies any extreme part, and in that there is indeed a wonderful strength. So strong is the elephant in his back and loins, and the sinews of his thighs, that he will carry a large wooden tower, and a great number of fighting men in it. No animal whatsoever comes near the elephant for strength of body, which is the main thing insisted on in this description.
2. He feeds on the productions of the earth and does not prey upon other animals: He eats grass as an ox (Job 40:15), the mountains bring him forth food (Job 40:20), and the beasts of the field do not tremble before him nor flee from him, as from a lion, but they play about him, knowing they are in no danger from him. This may give us occasion, (1.) To acknowledge the goodness of God in ordering it so that a creature of such bulk, which requires so much food, should not feed upon flesh (for then multitudes must die to keep him alive), but should be content with the grass of the field, to prevent such destruction of lives as otherwise must have ensued. (2.) To commend living upon herbs and fruits without flesh, according to the original appointment of man's food, Gen 1:29. Even the strength of an elephant, as of a horse and an ox, may be supported without flesh; and why not that of a man? Though therefore we use the liberty God has allowed us, yet be not among riotous eaters of flesh, Pro 23:20. (3.) To commend a quiet and peaceable life. Who would not rather, like the elephant, have his neighbours easy and pleasant about him, than, like the lion, have them all afraid of him?
3. He lodges under the shady trees (Job 40:21), which cover him with their shadow (Job 40:22), where he has a free and open air to breathe in, while lions, which live by prey, when they would repose themselves, are obliged to retire into a close and dark den, to live therein, and to abide in the covert of that, Job 38:40. Those who are a terror to others cannot but be sometimes a terror to themselves too; but those will be easy who will let others be easy about them; and the reed and fens, and the willows of the brook, though a very weak and slender fortification, yet are sufficient for the defence and security of those who therefore dread no harm, because they design none.
4. That he is a very great and greedy drinker, not of wine or strong drink (to be greedy of that is peculiar to man, who by his drunkenness makes a beast of himself), but of fair water. (1.) His size is prodigious, and therefore he must have supply accordingly, Job 40:23. He drinks so much that one would think he could drink up a river, if you would give him time, and not hasten him. Or, when he drinks, he hasteth not, as those do that drink in fear; he is confident of his own strength and safety, and therefore makes no haste when he drinks, no more haste than good speed. (2.) His eye anticipates more than he can take; for, when he is very thirsty, having been long kept without water, he trusts that he can drink up Jordan in his mouth, and even takes it with his eyes, Job 40:24. As a covetous man causes his eyes to fly upon the wealth of this world, which he is greedy of, so this great beast is said to snatch, or draw up, even a river with his eyes. (3.) His nose has in it strength enough for both; for, when he goes greedily to drink with it, he pierces through snares or nets, which perhaps are laid in the waters to catch fish. He makes nothing of the difficulties that lie in his way, so great is his strength and so eager his appetite.
II. The use that is to be made of this description. We have taken a view of this mountain of a beast, this over-grown animal, which is here set before us, not merely as a show (as sometimes it is in our country) to satisfy our curiosity and to amuse us, but as an argument with us to humble ourselves before the great God; for, 1. He made this vast animal, which is so fearfully and wonderfully made; it is the work of his hands, the contrivance of his wisdom, the production of his power; it is behemoth which I made, Job 40:15. Whatever strength this, or any other creature, has, it is derived from God, who therefore must be acknowledged to have all power originally and infinitely in himself, and such an arm as it is not for us to contest with. This beast is here called the chief, in its kind, of the ways of God (Job 40:19), an eminent instance of the Creator's power and wisdom. Those that will peruse the accounts given by historians of the elephant will find that his capacities approach nearer to those of reason than the capacities of any other brute-creature whatsoever, and therefore he is fitly called the chief of the ways of God, in the inferior part of the creation, no creature below man being preferable to him. 2. He made him with man, as he made other four-footed beasts, on the same day with man (Gen 1:25, Gen 1:26), whereas the fish and fowl were made the day before; he made him to live and move on the same earth, in the same element, and therefore man and beast are said to be jointly preserved by divine Providence as fellow-commoners, Psa 36:6. "It is behemoth, which I made with thee; I made that beast as well as thee, and he does not quarrel with me; why then dost thou? Why shouldst thou demand peculiar favours because I made thee (Job 10:9), when I made the behemoth likewise with thee? I made thee as well as that beast, and therefore can as easily manage thee at pleasure as that beast, and will do it whether thou refuse or whether thou choose. I made him with thee, that thou mayest look upon him and receive instruction." We need not go far for proofs and instances of God's almighty power and sovereign dominion; they are near us, they are with us, they are under our eye wherever we are. 3. He that made him can make his sword to approach to him (Job 40:19), that is, the same hand that made him, notwithstanding his great bulk and strength, can unmake him again at pleasure and kill an elephant as easily as a worm or a fly, without any difficulty, and without the imputation either of waste or wrong. God that gave to all the creatures their being may take away the being he gave; for may he not do what he will with his own? And he can do it; he that has power to create with a word no doubt has power to destroy with a word, and can as easily speak the creature into nothing as at first he spoke it out of nothing. The behemoth perhaps is here intended (as well as the leviathan afterwards) to represent those proud tyrants and oppressors whom God had just now challenged Job to abase and bring down. They think themselves as well fortified against the judgments of God as the elephant with his bones of brass and iron; but he that made the soul of man knows all the avenues to it, and can make the sword of justice, his wrath, to approach to it, and touch it in the most tender and sensible part. He that framed the engine, and put the parts of it together, knows how to take it in pieces. Woe to him therefore that strives with his Maker, for he that made him has therefore power to make him miserable, and will not make him happy unless he will be ruled by him.

He moveth his tail like a cedar - Therefore it was neither the elephant, who has a tail like that of the hog, nor the hippopotamus, whose tail is only about a foot long.
The sinews of his stones - I translate with Mr. Good, and for the same reasons, the sinews of his haunches, which is still more characteristic; as the animal must have excelled in leaping.

He moveth his tail like a cedar,.... To which it is compared, not for the length and largeness of it; for the tail both of the elephant and of the river horse is short; though Vartomannus (c) says, the tail of the elephant is like a buffalo's, and is four hands long, and thin of hair: but because of the smoothness, roundness, thickness, and firmness of it; such is the tail of the river horse, being like that of a hog or boar (d); which is crooked, twisted, and which it is said to turn back and about at pleasure, as the word used is thought to signify. Aben Ezra interprets it, "maketh to stand": that is, stiff and strong, and firm like a cedar. One writer (e) speaks of the horse of the Nile, as having a scaly tail; but he seems to confound it with the sea horse. Junius interprets it of its penis, its genital part; to which the Targum in the King's Bible is inclined: and Cicero (f) says, the ancients used to call that the tail; but that of the elephant, according to Aristotle (g), is but small, and not in proportion to the size of its body; and not in sight, and therefore can hardly be thought to be described; though the next clause seems to favour this sense:

the sinews of his stones are wrapped together; if by these are meant the testicles, as some think, so the Targums; the sinews of which were wreathed, implicated and ramified, like branches of trees, as Montanus renders it. Bochart interprets this of the sinews or nerves of the river horse, which having such plenty of them, are exceeding strong; so that, as some report, this creature will with one foot sink a boat (h); I have known him open his mouth, says a traveller (i), and set one tooth on the gunnel of a boat, and another on the second strake from the keel, more than four feet distant, and there bite a hole through the plank, and sink the boat.

(c) Navigat. l. 4. c. 9. (d) Aristot. Plin. Solin. & Isidore ut supra. (See Job 40:16.) (e) Nicet. Choniat. apud Fabrit. Gr. Bibliothec. vol. 6. p. 410. (f) Epist. l. 9. Ephesians 22. (g) Hist. Amimal. l. 2. c. 1.((h) Apud Hierozoic, par. 2. l. 5. c. 14. col. 758. (i) Dampier's Voyages, vol. 2. part 2. p. 105.

He moveth his tail; which though it be but short, both in the elephant and in the hippopotamus, yet when it is erected is exceeding stiff and strong. But this may be understood, either,

1. Of his generative part, which is off called by that or the like name, which the following close of the verse may seem to favour. Or,

2. Of the elephant’ s trunk, which being so eminent and remarkable a part, would not probably be omitted in this description, to which these words very fitly agree, because of its admirable motion and strength. Nor is it strange that this is called his tail, because that word is oft used improperly for any end of a thing, as . See also 28:13,44.

The sinews of his stones: this may be noted, because the elephant’ s testicles do not hang down below the belly, as they do in other beasts, but are contained within his belly, where they are fastened by ligaments of extraordinary strength. Or, the sinews of the terror thereof, to wit, of the trunk last mentioned, under the name of the

tail, i.e. its terrible sinews are strongly and strangely wrapped together, that he can move it as he listeth with wonderful dexterity and strength. Or,

the sinews of his thighs, as the latter word oft signifies in the Arabic tongue, which is very near akin to the Hebrew. The thighs and feet of the hippopotamus are noted to be so sinewy and strong, that one of them is able to break or overturn a large boat.

15 Behold now the behmth,
Which I have made with thee:
He eateth grass like an ox.
16 Behold now, his strength is in his loins,
And his force in the sinews of his belly.
17 He bendeth his tail like a cedar branch,
The sinews of his legs are firmly interwoven.
18 His bones are like tubes of brass,
His bones like bars of iron.
בּהמות (after the manner of the intensive plur. הוללות, חכמות, which play the part of the abstract termination), which sounds like a plur., but without the numerical plural signification, considered as Hebrew, denotes the beast κατ ̓ ἐξοχήν, or the giant of beasts, is however Hebraized from the Egyptian p-ehe-mau, (muau), i.e., the (p) ox (ehe) of the water (mau as in the Hebraized proper name משׁה). It is, as Bochart has first of all shown, the so-called river or Nile horse, Hippopotamus amphibius (in Isa 30:6, בּהמות נגב, as emblem of Egypt, which extends its power, and still is active in the interest of others), found in the rivers of Africa, but no longer found in the Nile, which is not inappropriately called a horse; the Arab. water-hog is better, Italian bomarino, Eng. sea-cow ?, like the Egyptian p-ehe-mau. The change of p and b in the exchange of Egyptian and Semitic words occurs also elsewhere, e.g., pug' and בּוּץ, harpu and חרב (ἅρπη), Apriu and עברים (according to Lauth). Nevertheless p-ehe-mau (not mau-t, for what should the post-positive fem. art. do here?) is first of all only the בהמות translated back again into the Egyptian by Jablonsky; an instance in favour of this is still wanting. In Hieroglyph the Nile-horse is called apet; it was honoured as divine. Brugsch dwelt in Thebes in the temple of the Apet.
(Note: In the astronomical representations the hippopotamus is in the neighbourhood of the North Pole in the place of the dragon of the present day, and bears the name of hes-mut, in which mut = t. mau, "the mother." Hes however is obscure; Birch explains it by: raging.)
In Job 40:15 עמּך signifies nothing but "with thee," so that thou hast it before thee. This water-ox eats חציר, green grass, like an ox. That it prefers to plunder the produce of the fields - in Arab. chadı̂r signifies, in particular, green barley - is accordingly self-evident. Nevertheless, it has gigantic strength, viz., in its plump loins and in the sinews (שׁרירי, properly the firm constituent parts,
(Note: Staring from its primary signification (made firm, fast), Arab. srı̂r, שׁרירא can signify e.g., also things put together from wood: a throne, a hand-barrow, bedstead and cradle, metaphor. the foundation. Wetzst. otherwise: "The שׂרירי הבטן are not the sinews and muscles, still less 'the private parts' of others, but the four bearers of the animal body = arkân el-batn, viz., the bones of the מתנים, Job 40:16, together with the two shoulder-blades. The Arab. sarı̂r is that on which a thing is supported or rests, on which it stands firmly, or moves about. Neshwn (i. 280) says: ‛sarı̂r is the substratum on which a thing rests,' and the sarı̂r er-ra's, says the same, is the place where the head rests upon the nape of the neck. The Kms gives the same signification primo loco, which shows that it is general; then follows in gen. Arab. muḍṭaja‛, "the support of a thing.")
therefore: ligaments and muscles) of its clumsy belly. The brush of a tail, short in comparison with the monster itself, is compared to a cedar (a branch of it), ratione glabritiei, rotunditatis, spissitudinis et firmitatis (Bochart); since the beast is in general almost without hair, it looks like a stiff, naked bone, and yet it can bend it like an elastic cedar branch; חפץ is Hebraeo-Arab., ḥfḍ
(Note: Wetzst. otherwise: One may compare the Arab. chafaḍa, fut. i, to hold, sit, lie motionless (in any place), from which the signification of desiring, longing, has been developed, since in the Semitic languages the figure of fixing (ta‛alluq) the heard and the eye on any desired object is at the basis of this notion (wherefore such verbs are joined with the praep. בּ). According to this, it is to be explained, "his tail is motionless like (the short and thick stem of) The cedar," for the stunted tail of an animal is a mark of its strength to a Semite. In 1860, as I was visiting the neighbouring mountain fortress of el-Hosn with the octogenarian Fjd, the sheikh of Fk in Gln, we rode past Fjd's ploughmen; and as one of them was letting his team go slowly along, the sheikh cried out to him from a distance: Faster! faster! They (the steers, which thou ploughest) are not oxen weak with age, nor are they the dower of a widow (who at her second marriage receives only a pair of weak wretched oxen from her father or brother); but they are heifers (3-4 year-old steers) with stiffly raised tails (wadhujûluhin muqashmare, מקשׁמר an intensive קשׁוּר or שׁלאנן comp. שׁלאנן, Job 21:23).)
is a word used directly of the bending of wood (el-‛ûd).
Since this description, like the whole book of Job, is so strongly Arabized, פחד, Job 40:17, will also be one word with the Arab. fachidh, the thigh; as the Arabic version also translates: ‛urûku afchâdhihi (the veins or strings of its thigh). The Targ., retaining the word of the text here,
(Note: Another Targ., which translates גבריה ושׁעבוזוהי, penis et testiculi ejus, vid., Aruch s.v. שׁעבז.)
has פּחדין in Lev 21:20 for אשׁך, a testicle, prop. inguina, the groins; we interpret: the sinews of its thighs or legs
(Note: According to Fleischer, fachidh signifies properly the thick-leg (= thigh), from the root fach, with the general signification of being puffed out, swollen, thick.)
are intertwined after the manner of intertwined vine branches, שׂריגים.
(Note: In the choice of the word ישׂרגו, the mushâgarat ed-dawâlı̂ (from שׁגר = שׂרג), "the interweaving of the vine branches" was undoubtedly before the poet's eye; comp. Deutsch. Morgenl. Zeitschr. xi. 477: "On all sides in this delightful corner of the earth (the Ghta) the vine left to itself, in diversified ramifications, often a dozen branches resembling so many huge snakes entangled together, swings to and fro upon the shining stem of the lofty white poplar." And ib. S. 491: "a twisted vine almost the thickness of a man, as though formed of rods of iron (comp. Job 40:18).")
But why is פחדיו pointed thus, and not פחדיו (as e.g., שׁעריו)? It is either an Aramaizing (with אשׁריו it has another relationship) pointing of the plur., or rather, as Khler has perceived, a regularly-pointed dual (like רגליו), from פּחדים (like פּעמים), which is equally suitable in connection with the signification femora as testiculi. מטיל, Job 40:18, is also Hebraeo-Arab.; for Arab. mṭl signifies to forge, or properly to extend by forging (hammering), and to lengthen, undoubtedly a secondary formation of טוּל, tâla, to be long, as makuna of kâna, madana of dâna, massara (to found a fortified city) of sâra, chiefly (if not always) by the intervention of such nouns as makân, medı̂ne, misr (= מצור), therefore in the present instance by the intervention of this metı̂l (= memtûl)
(Note: The noun מטיל is also found in the Lexicon of Neshwn, i. 63: "מטיל is equivalent to ממטוּל, viz., that which is hammered out in length, used of iron and other metals; and one says חדידה מטילה of a piece of iron that has been hammered for the purpose of stretching it." The verb Neshwn explains: "מטל said of iron signifies to stretch it that it may become long." The verb מטל can be regarded as a fusion of the root מדד (מטט, טוּט, comp. מוטה, and Arab. mûṭ Beduin: to take long steps) with the root טוּל, to be long. - Wetzst. The above explanation of the origin of the verb מטל seems to us more probable.)
whence probably μέταλλον (metal), properly iron in bars or rods, therefore metal in a wrought state, although not yet finished.
(Note: Ibn-Koreisch in Pinsker, Likkute, p. קנא, explains it without exactness by sebikat hadı̂d, which signifies a smelted and formed piece of iron.)
Its bones are like tubes of brass, its bones (גּרמיו, the more Aram. word) like forged rods of iron - what an appropriate description of the comparatively thin but firm as iron skeleton by which the plump mass of flesh of the gigantic boar-like grass-eater is carried!