deed a very important analogy remains to be mentioned. The creative power, which love really is, rightly considered from the natural standpoint, remains as the real attribute of the Divinity, sublimated from the erotic impression; therefore, in the poem God is praised throughout as Creator.
Job offers the same illustration. Satan is the destroyer of Job's fruitfulness. God is the fruitful one himself, therefore, at the end of the book, he gives forth, as an expression of his own creative power, this hymn, filled with lofty poetic beauty. In this hymn, strangely enough, two unsympathetic representatives of the animal kingdom, behemoth and the leviathan, both expressive of the crudest force conceivable in nature, are given chief consideration; the behemoth being really the phallic attribute of the God of Creation.
"Behold now behemoth, which I made as well as thee;
He eateth grass as an ox.
Lo, now; his strength is in his loins,
And his force is in the muscles of his belly.
He moveth his tail like a cedar:
The sinews of his thighs are knit together.
His bones are as tubes of brass;
His limbs are like bars of iron.
He is the chief of the ways of God:
He only that made him giveth him his sword. ...
Behold, if a river overflow, he trembleth not;
He is confident though a Jordan swell even to his mouth.
Shall any take him when he is on the watch.
Or pierce through his nose with a snare?
Canst thou draw leviathan with a fish-hook?
Or press down his tongue with a cord? ...
