ANIMADVERSIONES Behemoth and Leviathan The climax of God’s speeches in the Theophany in Job 40–41 is his de- scription of Behemoth and Leviathan. There is currently a consensus that these beasts are dangerous and frightening, and that even their description is frightening, and as such they serve to emphasize God’s affinity with the forces of chaos and the indifference of the universe to human concerns 1. A re-ex- amination of the identities and qualities of these creatures is in order, and this may contribute to an understanding of God’s message in the Theophany. 1. Behemoth (Job 40,15-24) Almost all commentators identify Behemoth, correctly, as the hippopota- mus 2. Behemoth is massive and powerful. It spends its days in the river, often with its mouth agape, so that the river can be said to gush into its mouth (40,23) 3. It “eats grass like an ox” (40,15b). The only visible disparity is the comparison of the hippopotamus’s tail (actually quite short, at about 45 cm.) See, for example, E.L. GREENSTEIN, “The Problem of Evil in the Book 1 of Job”, Mishneh Todah. Studies in Deuteronomy and Its Cultural Environ- ment in Honor of Jeffrey H. Tigay (eds. N.S. FOX et al.; Winona Lake, IN 2009) 333-362, at 355; and J.G. WILLIAMS, “You Have Not Spoken Truth of Me: Mystery and Irony in Job”, ZAW 83 (1971) 231-255, at 246. This is the consensus; see the survey and discussion in D.J.A. CLINES, 2 Job 38-42 (WBC; Nashville, TN 2011) 148-157. In the Theophany twmhb is used as a masculine singular. In Job 12,7 is a collective for beasts treated as a feminine singular noun. (This is clearly equivalent to the plural treatment of the form in 35,11). In Ps 73,22b twmhb is an actual singular. In the Theo- phany, the word was probably chosen to designate the hippopotamus in the absence of a proper term for the creature in Hebrew. It would mean something like “super-beast.” Against B. Couroyer’s thesis that Behemoth is the wild ox (“Qui est Béhémoth: Job 40,15-24?”, RB 82 [1975] 418-443), see the de- tailed arguments of O. KEEL, Jahwes Entgegnung an Ijob. Eine Deutung von Ijob 38-41 vor dem Hintergrund der zeitgenössischen Bildkunst (FRLANT 121; Göttingen 1978) 127-131. As for qX[, the context requires an action of the river that might be ex- 3 pected to daunt most creatures but does not affect the hippopotamus. It seems to me that there is a metaphorical shift from “oppress”, the usual meaning of qX[, to “assail” or the like. BIBLICA 93.2 (2012) 261-267 © Gregorian Biblical Press 2012 - Tutti i diritti riservati