My Lonely City

Job 41 is all about this Leviathan. The footnote says “possibly a crocodile” but God talks about his breathing fire and what-not, which I, personally, have never heard of a crocodile doing. On the other hand, maybe they just don’t make them like they used to. ¶ I think that God is comparing himself to the leviathan, but not like, “I’m so awesome, check me out!” but rather a lament of the distance created between himself and his creation by the ambiguity of “the fear of God”. (My sentences are really long and tangled, aren’t they?) The leviathan is not human but the beginning description of him is in terms of a mighty prisoner of war, (sound familiar?) and the ludicrousness of imagining him pleading for his life in exchange for lifelong servanthood. And he is not a domesticated animal, as the next section of descriptions show. Instead, he is described as a sort of Poseidon-like figure, a normal-god with extraordinary strength, ambiguous anthropomorphism, supernatural armor, and, somewhat incongruously, dominion over “all who are proud.” Perhaps his description of the Leviathan is meant to be somewhat incongruous, to demonstrate that Job’s and his friends’ discourse concerning God is not over God as he is, but rather as they imagine him to be. Perhaps the leviathan is, indeed, a mythical dragon, and God is ironically ‘describing’ something that doesn’t exist outside of folklore to confront his listeners with their tendency to lump all things they don’t understand into the same category. It might be sort of like a mall Santa Clause saying, “Give my regards to the Tooth Fairy.” Or perhaps I’m just not awake yet and I’m rambling. Oh, well; time will tell.