I will not argue that my treatment of Behemoth (Job 40:15-27), based on Robert Fyall's work, is widely agreed with or easy to understand. I find it convincing; you may not. But I want to elaborate more on three points based on the passage: why I find the conventional views unconvincing, why my view may not be easy to accept, and what that view actually is.
I find neither the creationist view (that Behemoth is a sauropod) nor the conventional view (that Behemoth is a large river mammal or the elephant) holds much weight with me. Part of it is undoubtedly the fact that neither of these views seem to take into account the insidious turn in the road I last posted about. But even looking at just the description of the Behemoth, something just doesn't quite ring true:
"Look at the behemoth,
which I made along with you
and which feeds on grass like an ox.
What strength he has in his loins,
what power in the muscles of his belly!
His tail sways like a cedar;
the sinews of his thighs are close-knit.
His bones are tubes of bronze,
his limbs like rods of iron.
He ranks first among the works of God,
yet his Maker can approach him with his sword.
The hills bring him their produce,
and all the wild animals play nearby.
Under the lotus plants he lies,
hidden among the reeds in the marsh.
The lotuses conceal him in their shadow;
the poplars by the stream surround him.
When the river rages, he is not alarmed;
he is secure, though the Jordan should surge against his mouth.
Can anyone capture him by the eyes,
or trap him and pierce his nose?
(Job 40:15-24 NIV)
The passage seems positively placid compared to what's coming in the next chapter, but all through it there seems to be a dark undercurrent. Where in all of this, for example, is the surging of the Jordan involved? If the wild animals play nearby without any concerns, why does God have to approach with His sword, and why does anyone want to capture him by the eyes? Would you really pierce the nose of a hippo, or a sauropod? Why the emphasis on the Behemoth's strength if it really is such a placid, peaceable beast?
This brings me to my second point: why my identification is hard to identify (heh, heh) with. If, in Behemoth, we are actually dealing with a Scriptural interpretation of a pagan symbol of Death, then we are dealing with Death at two reserves. Imagine that two millenia from now Christmas has ceased to exist, and the single record we have of any festivity is the song I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus! From that one song, would we be able to accurately reconstruct what Christmas was like? Would we detect the humour in the song at all, or would we think it's just another raunchy tune from the old days of seedy morality? We could only pick up the fact that Santa Claus is jolly and promiscuous, and might well try to see which historical figure he was. Only by examining all the other stories and movies and songs about Santa Claus would we know that he is actually a symbol of Christmas, and only when we understood what Christmas is would we be able to fully identify Santa.
In the same way, what we are seeing (if of course my hypothesis is accurate) is Scripture editing a pagan concept for its own use. Just looking at Job, we will never get an accurate idea of what Behemoth is. We can take a general view and say that Behemoth represents any big power over which God is still sovereign; but to know what Behemoth actually is we have to examine what all other literature about it says, and most of that literature comes from Ugaritic and Canaanite mythology. On a practical level, I don't have any of those references on hand; on a pedagogical level, appealing to comparative mythology to explain Scriptural concepts is not a popular move.
But off we go anyway. I will just give hints that Behemoth is really Death in a scary suit; whether they are believable or not is up to you. What I am convinced of is that it is definitely more believable than the idea that Behemoth is just another big dumb beast.
The first clue to notice is of course the central little bit of it: why does the Maker have to approach Behemoth with His sword? Why, at the end, does God note that no human can fight it, and at the beginning that it is so strong? That makes sense if we are talking about Death. What about Death being "made along with you"? It makes sense if we realize that when God created man He foreknew (glossing over the whole predestination-free will debate) that man would bring Death into the world by sinning.
Those are big clues. Small clues are that "eating grass" can actually have the sense of devouring. Think of a fire raging across a dry field, or a man getting caught in the blades of a combine harvester, and you can see that there is at least an alternative. The hills bring him their produce - because they cannot refuse him. And why is his habitat hidden, concealed in the shadow, with reeds and lotuses and poplars? Well, Death is shadowy and comes to destroy the living - it is no surprise that his dominion is dark and stalely silent. And the reference to the river Jordan rushing against his mouth may well be another hint of attribution to Mot, who is depicted as having huge jaws as a symbol of the wide reach of death.
If any of this has convinced you, the only question left is why describe Death? This we will see later on.
