That sea is the morass of the Hebrew mind, which leads to the Hebrew’s inability to recognize that they are chosen only in the sense that they are obligated to choose righteously. Speaking about the failure of men, the punishment of the Hebrews to the punishment of the leviathan, which serves as an emblem of the wayward Hebrews themselves: “In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan, the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea ( Isaiah 27:1). The prophet warns the children of Israel that their failure to keep the covenant with their God will lead to their destruction. Does Job know anything about the leviathan in his own mind? Does he know anything about his repeated inability to distinguish between the Lord who pleads for his people’s devotion and the leviathan who can take no interest in him? Even the righteous Job seems to have no ideas about what to make of the beast, even though the beast is himself, sporting a “nose,” just like a man. Can Job not distinguish the covenantal God of Abraham from his own bestial thinking? “Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down? Canst thou put a hook into his nose? Or bore his jaw through with a thorn? Will he make many supplications unto thee? Will he speak soft words unto thee? Will he make a covenant with thee?” ( 40:25-28) God seems to have created the beast to remind the “stiff-necked” Hebrews that they cannot reliably forsake their idolatry, their recidivist habit of falling back on the belief in golden calves of all kinds. The Lord admonishes Job for failing to understand the difference between God and the beast. To this poet, the leviathan does not represent a serpent far away in the deeps rather, it is related to Job’s own impoverished understanding. The author of the Book of Job expands on the connection between the leviathan and man. David juxtaposes the builders of ships with the great beast, but what possible connection could they have? What is there about the leviathan that can be compared to shipwrights? David goes on to liken the endeavors of man to the play of those great beasts in the sea: “There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein” (104:26). So is the great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts” (104:24-25). “O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches. King David’s Psalm 104 draws on resonances deeper than the whale’s wake. More importantly, the leviathan’s metaphorical meanings for literate Hebrews far outweighed the heft of the imagined beast. Perhaps leviathan referred to the Egyptian crocodile, perhaps to a rock snake or another terrifying serpent. However, it is not clear what animal the ancient Hebrews had in mind. The renowned eleventh-century commentator, Rashi, identified these “large fish” as the leviathan, and this is the term that the knowledgeable King James translators passed on to us, in their well-wrought English. This beast is called the teninim, in the plural, for in ancient Hebrew the plural is often used to signify immense significance, as in the very name of the Creator, Elokim. The “anti-Mosaic” beast to which Ishmael refers appears in the very on the first page of the Five Books of Moses, where it is found among those animals brought forth on the fifth day of creation. His dull physicality prevented him from grasping his father’s covenant, even though Ishmael means “Man of God.” “Horror-struck,” Ishmael, named after the first-born son of Abraham, acknowledges that the Leviathan has infiltrated and overwhelmed his mind, as was the case for the original Ishmael, who was cast out. I am horror-struck at this anti-Mosaic, unsourced existence of the whale, which, having been before all time, must needs exist after all humane ages are over” (104). Thus says Ishmael, Moby Dick’s, narrator: “When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks, jaws, ribs, and vertebrae, all characterized by partial resemblances to the existing breeds of sea-monsters. Indeed, Melville refers to Ahab’s fatal whale, Moby Dick, as a leviathan, matching the Hebrew-named captain with a beast named in the Hebrew Bible. But the idea of a leviathan has a much richer set of meanings in literary English. In modern English, a leviathan is any huge being, man or beast, especially a whale.
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