What is leviathan

By the Book of Job, the leviathan takes on the more monstruous qualities of a sea monster. Job — Essentially, the leviathan is indomitable. And in the story, God references the leviathan in context to his own strength.

It was you who crushed the heads of the leviathan and gave him as food to the creatures of the desert. There the ships go to and fro, and the leviathan, which you formed, to frolic there. Crocodiles were plentiful in the Nile River, so the Israelites most likely associated them with Egypt, which enhanced the metaphor of Egypt as a sinister sea monster. The leviathan also appears in the New Testament. He was hurled to the Earth, and his angels with him.

Later in Revelation, the leviathan, referred to as a dragon, symbolizes the worship of men instead of God as well as the words of false prophets. Most of us are familiar with the biblical story of Jonah, the man who was swallowed by a whale. While the whale version of the story is the generally accepted one, some biblical scholars believe the whale was actually the leviathan. The confusion lies in the various translations of the Bible. But as mentioned earlier, even the word tannin has some variations, including crocodile and sea monster.

When the Book of Jonah was written in the 5th of 4th centuries, there were whales in the Mediterranean Sea, as there still are today. Other whale species have throats that are too narrow to swallow a person, and their baleens are not designed to chew up large prey in order to swallow it.

At the time Jonah was written, there were sperm whales in the Mediterranean. So technically, the story of Jonah could have been based on a sperm whale actually swallowing a many. However, while there have been some historical accounts of sperm whales swallowing people, these accounts are unproven. Still, it will probably remain a mystery whether the authors of the Book of Jonah were telling the story of a whale or the leviathan, or if they thought a whale was a leviathan.

Whether a sperm whale swallowed Jonah or not, the erroneous view of whales as fierce apex predators, even monsters, persisted to the 19th century, when Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick , and beyond. In Jewish and Christian mysticism, the leviathan came to be a symbol of the defeat of ignorance and the pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. In the foundational piece of Kabbalistic literature called the Zohar , the leviathan takes on the form of an ouroboros , or the symbol of a circular snake eating its tale.

While interpretations vary, in Jewish and Christian mysticism, the symbol of the ouroboros may imply that human beings are caught in a cycle of the material world until we break free and reach spiritual enlightenment through a connection with God. An article about the leviathan would be incomplete without mentioning its Asian counterpart: the Chinese dragon.

Like the leviathan, the Chinese dragon is an enormous fire-breathing reptile. In addition, it controls water, including the ocean, typhoons, and floods. However, the Asian version of the dragon has much more positive aspects than the leviathan. The Chinese respected and feared their dragon like the leviathan, however, they also saw it as a symbol of honorable power and good fortune.

The Vikings also had their version of the giant sea monster. Thousands of miles away from the Mediterranean, the Native Americans also told stories of a supernatural sea monster.

They called this creature the Underwater Panther. The Ojibwe Native Americans told stories of an aquatic creature that was fierce and bloodthirsty, which would eat people. In addition, it ruled lakes, rivers, and other waterways. On a personal level, the leviathan spirit animal can symbolize any number of great challenges that a person faces in their lifetime. These challenges are karmic in scope and can include repeated negative cycles that are hard to break.

For example, the leviathans we battle in our lifetimes might be addiction, abuse, cruelty, unhealthy relationships, or unhealthy behavior. Today, Leviathan often suggests a crushing political bureaucracy. Leviathan can also be immensely useful as a general term meaning "something monstrous or of enormous size.

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'leviathan.

Send us feedback. See more words from the same century. Accessed 11 Nov. Nglish: Translation of leviathan for Spanish Speakers.

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! Log in Sign Up. Save Word. Its story is related at length in the Talmud Baba Bathra 74b , where it is told that the Leviathan will be slain and its flesh served as a feast to the righteous in [the] Time to Come, and its skin used to cover the tent where the banquet will take place.

There is another religious 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]. Leviathan the sea-monster, with Behemoth the land-monster and Ziz the air-monster.

But the male is named Behemoth, who occupied with his breast a waste wilderness named Duidain. Legend has it that in the banquet after the end of conflict, the carcass of the leviathan will be served as a meal, along with the behemoth and the ziz. Leviathan may also be interpreted as the sea itself, with its counterparts behemoth being the land and ziz being the air and space.

Some scholars have interpreted Leviathan, and other references to the sea in the Old Testament, as highly metaphorical references to seafaring marauders who once terrorized the Kingdom of Israel. Others liken the mention to Tiamat and other similar monsters who represented the sea as a foe to the gods in myths of nearby cultures. The Biblical references to Leviathan appear to have evolved from the Canaanite Baal cycle involving a confrontation between Hadad Baal and a seven headed sea monster named Lotan.

Lotan is the Ugaritic orthograph for Hebrew Leviathan. Hadad defeats him. In Jewish folklore, Rahab noise, tumult, arrogance is a mythical sea monster, a dragon of the waters, the " demon of the sea". Rahab represents the primordial abyss, the water-dragon of darkness and chaos. Rahab later became a particular demon, inhabitant of the sea, especially associated with the Red Sea. This tradition is reflected in Psalm The Christian interpretation of Leviathan is often considered to be a demon or natural monster associated with Satan or the Devil , and held by some to be the same monster as Rahab Isaiah Perhaps, as suggested by theologians, this is hyperbole for a hippo.

But something tells me that we have not yet identified the true nature of this creature. Just like we haven't quite figured out the true nature of the leviathan. The scholars who see themselves as realists and maybe a little more skittish around the explanations of the Leviathan as a dragon or fire-breathing sea serpent have suggested the leviathan was a crocodile, and that the fire-breathing language in Job served more as a hyperbole or metaphor in literary terms.

Other theologians have suggested that the Leviathan was a large reptile in the sea, perhaps one of the species of dinosaurs that roamed the earth before they went extinct. But as mentioned in the verses above, only God can wield control over such a powerful beast. Apart from the fascinating descriptions, we read in Job 41 , why should we know about this ancient creature?

Nevertheless, we should know about the Leviathan and the behemoth, for that matter for a number of reasons. First, if the creature does come from some subspecies of dinosaur, the Bible shows that humans and dinosaurs may have interacted with one another. And if not, then at least we know that people from millennia before dealt with creatures that we probably could not fathom. This further goes to show that all creation does indeed proclaim the glory of the Lord.

Whether poetic or literal, God knew the illustration of this animal would remind the listener that no powers on earth, whether in the natural world or in man-made kingdoms, can stand the might and glory of our Lord. Hope Bolinger is an editor at Salem, a multi-published novelist, and a graduate of Taylor University's professional writing program.

More than 1, of her works have been featured in various publications ranging from Writer's Digest to Keys for Kids. She has worked for various publishing companies, magazines, newspapers, and literary agencies and has edited the work of authors such as Jerry B.

Jenkins and Michelle Medlock Adams. Her modern-day Daniel trilogy is out with IlluminateYA.