iv. 2, 19. Behemoth and leviathan, says Herder, are the pillars of Hercules at the end of the book, the non plus ultra of another world distant from the scene. What the same writer says of the poet, that he does not “mean to furnish any contributions to Pennant's Zoologie or to Linnaeus' Animal Kingdom,” the expositor also must assent to.
Chap. 41
Verses 1-5
Job 41:1-5 1 Dost thou draw the crocodile by a hoop-net,
And dost thou sink his tongue into the line?! 2 Canst thou put a rush-ring into his nose,
And pierce his cheeks with a hook? 3 Will he make many supplications to thee,
Or speak flatteries to thee? 4 Will he make a covenant with thee,
To take him as a perpetual slave? 5 Wilt thou play with him as a little bird,
And bind him for thy maidens?
In Job 3:8, לויתן signified the celestial dragon, that causes the eclipses of the sun (according to the Indian mythology, râhu the black serpent, and ketu the red serpent); in Psa 104:26 it does not denote some great sea-saurian after the kind of the hydrarchus of the primeval world,[1] but directly the whale, as in the Talmud (Lewysohn, Zoologie des Talm. §178f.). Elsewhere, however, the crocodile is thus named, and in fact as תּנּין also, another appellation of this natural wonder of Egypt, as an emblem of the mightiness of Pharaoh (vid., on Psa 74:13.), as once again the crocodile itself is called in Arab. el-fir‛annu. The Old Testament language possesses no proper name for the crocodile; even the Talmudic makes use of קרוקתא = κροκόδειλος (Lewysohn, §271). לויתן is the generic name of twisted, and תנין long-extended monsters. Since the Egyptian name of the crocodile has not been Hebraized, the poet contents himself in תּמשׁך with
- ↑ Vid., Grässe, Beiträge, S. 94ff.
