Taming Leviathan

Christopher Ash's Out of the Storm is a great straight-forward companion to reading Job. In explaining God's speeches at the end of the book he challenges an interpretation of chapters 40-41 which sees Leviathan and Behemoth as just powerful creatures that God created, i.e. an extension of 38:1-40:2 where God shows himself as the Almighty Creator.

There are a number of problems with seeing Leviathan and Behemoth as just plain vanilla creatures like the ox, hawk, ostrich, horse and donkey of chapter 39:

1. The description doesn't seem to fit any animal we know of. Not hippos, crocodiles or even dinosaurs!
2. The second speech from God (40:6-42:6) provokes a "stronger reaction of worship and penitence in Job than the first"
3. While Job never provides a complete answer to the 'problem of evil', a reminder that God is our Almighty Creator is a very partial answer indeed. As Ash quotes George Bernard Shaw:

God really has to do better in explaining the problem of evil than to say, "You can't make a hippopotamus, can you?"

Instead there is a promise contained in this second speech of God, if you really understand who Leviathan and Behemoth are:

Leviathan in biblical imagery is the arch-enemy of God, the prince of the power of evil, Satan, the god of this world (as Jesus calls him). Here is the embodiment of beastliness, of terror, of undiluted evil [...]

The Lord has sung the praise of Leviathan's terrifying strength. But why has he done so? Why has he filled Job's mind with the awesome terrors of evil? Answer: so that Job may understand that he, the Lord, is stronger still [...]

Even Satan, the Leviathan, is God's Satan, God's pet - dare we put it like this. And that means that as we suffer, and as we sit with others who suffer, we may with absolute confidence bow down to this sovereign God, knowing that the evil that comes may be terrible, but it cannot and will not ever go one tiny fraction beyond the leash on which God has put it. And it will not go on forever. For the One to whom we belong is God.

(pp. 95-97)