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Job 40:
15 Take a look at Behemoth, which I made, just as I made you. It eats grass like an ox.
Job 41:
1 Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope?
Some thought Leviathan and Behemoth were amphibious. Benson Commentary:
But some later and very learned men take the leviathan to be the crocodile, and the behemoth to be a creature called the hippopotamus, or river-horse, which may seem to be fitly joined with the crocodile, both being very well known to Job and his friends, as being frequent in the adjacent places, both amphibious, living and preying both in the water and upon the land, and both being creatures of great bulk and strength.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown:
behemoth—The description in part agrees with the hippopotamus, in part with the elephant, but exactly in all details with neither. It is rather a poetical personification of the great Pachydermata, or Herbivora (so "he eateth grass"), the idea of the hippopotamus being predominant. In Job 40:17, "the tail like a cedar," hardly applies to the latter (so also Job 40:20, 23, "Jordan," a river which elephants alone could reach, but see on [560]Job 40:23). On the other hand, Job 40:21, 22 are characteristic of the amphibious river horse. So leviathan (the twisting animal), Job 41:1, is a generalized term for cetacea, pythons, saurians of the neighboring seas and rivers, including the crocodile, which is the most prominent, and is often associated with the river horse by old writers. "Behemoth" seems to be the Egyptian Pehemout, "water-ox," Hebraized, so-called as being like an ox, whence the Italian bombarino.
Barnes:
It is an amphibious animal, or an animal whose usual resort is the river, though he is occasionally on land. This is evident, because he is mentioned as lying under the covert of the reed and the fens; as abiding in marshy places, or among the willows of the brook, Job 40:21-22, while at other times he is on the mountains, or among other animals, and feeds on grass like the ox, Job 40:15, Job 40:20. This account would not agree well with the elephant, whose residence is not among marshes and fens, but on solid ground.
Ancient writers often paired crocodiles and hippopotamuses together. Then perhaps Leviathan was a crocodile, and Behemoth was a hippopotamus.
As they are here grouped together in the argument, it is probable that they belong to the same class; and if by the leviathan is meant the "crocodile," then the presumption is that the river-horse, or the hippopotamus, is here intended. These two animals, as being Egyptian wonders, are everywhere mentioned together by ancient writers; see Herodotus, ii.-69-71; Diod. Sic. i. 35; and Pliny, "Hist. Nat." xxviii. 8.
Job 40:
17 He makes his tail stiff like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together.
Benson thought it could be a hippo:
Job 40:17. He moveth his tail like a cedar — Though the tail be but short, both in the elephant, and in the hippopotamus; yet, when it is erected, it is exceeding stiff and strong. The sinews of his stones, &c. — Rather, of his thighs, as the Hebrew may be rendered. The thighs and feet of the river- horse are so sinewy and strong that one of them is able to break or overturn a large boat.
These were guesses.
According to paleontologists, (non-bird) dinosaurs became extinct 66 million years ago. Crocodiles are descendants of archosaurs .
I'm just going to copy across what I wrote elsewhere on Leviathan;
On the one hand, it looks like a description of the whale, written by someone who has never seen a whale (the Israelites were an inland people) and depends on the long-distance reputation of the animal. It lives in the sea. Men hunt it, but their primitive harpoons penetrate the skin with so much difficulty that they are convinced it must be armour-plated. Modern translators suggest "crocodile" (which does not live in the sea, and which can be captured by a determined party of men) because they take ""armour-plated" too literally.
On the other hand, other Biblical references use the name "Leviathan" as a symbol of supreme evil (that connection probably inspired the fictional Moby Dick) In Isaiah ch27 v1, it is the great sea-living dragon which will be slain on the Day of the Lord, when God exerts his power and destroys every form of evil. It is fitting that evil should live in the sea, because theology (Genesis ch1) identifies the sea as the residue of the original Abyss. That is why the sea keeps appearing as the source of evil in the book of Revelation. In Job ch3 v8, Leviathan is identified with the mythical monster, known over a wide culture-area, who causes eclipses by trying to swallow up the sun (an image echoed in Revelation ch12).
If Leviathan is a symbol of evil, that explains why his description is the climax of the book. The book of Job is all about Job trying to make God give an answer to the "problem of evil" question. This passage is God's way of saying "Yes, I acknowledge that evil exits and is tolerated, for the moment, but I refuse to explain why". Job responds to this message in the next chapter by repenting of his impertinence.