by
Damien F. Mackey
“Look at Behemoth,
which I made along with you
and which feeds on grass like an ox.
What strength it has in its loins,
what power in the muscles of its belly!
Its tail sways like a cedar;
the sinews of its thighs are close-knit.
Its bones are tubes of bronze,
its limbs like rods of iron.
It ranks first among the works of God,
yet its Maker can approach it with his sword.
The hills bring it their produce,
and all the wild animals play nearby.
Under the lotus plants it lies,
hidden among the reeds in the marsh.
The lotuses conceal it in their shadow;
the poplars by the stream surround it.
A raging river does not alarm it;
it is secure, though the Jordan should surge
against its mouth.
Can anyone capture it by the eyes,
or trap it and pierce its nose?”
Job 40:15-24
Was ‘Behemoth’ a Dinosaur?
Favouring
this theory, for those, who think that Job dated right back to the Ice Ages, or
to the early patriarchal times, is the fact that, whereas common candidates for
the Book of Job’s ‘Behemoth’ - say, the elephant or the hippo - have
insignificant piggy-like tails, ‘Behemoth’ has a tail to recall the impressive Cedar
of Lebanon (Job 40:17): “Its
tail sways like a cedar …”.
Some
Creationists, for instance, think that a dinosaur was probably intended here.
Wayne
Jackson, for example, referring to Creationist Dr. Henry Morris (d. 2006), will
ask the question: “Why do you suppose that a dinosaur is rarely proposed as
a candidate for behemoth?”
https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/1007-job-behemoth-and-dinosaurs
Dinosaur
Why do you suppose that a dinosaur is rarely proposed as
a candidate for behemoth? The answer is very simple. As noted earlier, the
common perception is that dinosaurs became extinct long before man arrived upon
this planet (approximately 65 million years, it is alleged). Accordingly,
behemoth simply could not be a variety of dinosaur — because the chronological
disparity prohibits such. Dr. Henry Morris has addressed the matter in this
fashion.
“Modern Bible scholars, for the most part, have become so
conditioned to think in terms of the long ages of evolutionary geology that it
never occurs to them that mankind once lived in the same world with the great
animals that are now found only as fossils” (p. 115).
As we have demonstrated already, there is unequivocal
biblical testimony that human beings and dinosaurs inhabited the same early
environment of the earth, and there is not a shred of scientific evidence that
proves otherwise. ….
And Mart-Jan Paul, in
“Behemoth
and leviathan in the book of Job”, asking, “What, then, was behemoth?”, will
suggest that it may have been a now extinct apatosaur, or
something akin to it:
https://creation.com/behemoth-and-leviathan
What, then, was behemoth?
If we take extinct animals into consideration, a
herbivorous dinosaur seems a more likely candidate. The apatosaur had a large
tail, lived on green plants and weighed about 30 tonnes.
The ultrasaur could reach a height of 18 m and a length
of 30 m, with a weight of 136 tonnes. It also was a herbivore with an enormous
tail. The brachiosaur was 12 m tall, 23 m long and 60 to 70 tonnes in weight.
Its tail could reach a length of nearly 6 m and a breadth of nearly 1.5 m. In
the sauropods, large bundles of muscles are visible on the outside of the body
of the animal. Behemoth is not only a herbivore, but more specifically it is a
grass-eater. An animal that does fit this aspect is the 15 m long nigersaur,
found in the Republic of Niger in Africa. ….
Because new kinds of extinct animals continue to be found
in our time, and because the description in Job 40 is not
specific enough, we cannot identify precisely which animal is described.
Neither do we know whether the above-mentioned animals still lived in the time
of Job, but it is useful for our exegesis to include such examples. ….
[End of quotes]
Allan Steel has, for his part, written an entire article
on the subject, “Could Behemoth Have
Been a Dinosaur?”:
https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/could-behemoth-have-been-a-dinosaur/
in which he concludes:
…. The whole passage
in Job 40 concerning Behemoth certainly suggests a large
animal, and no known living animal fits the passage adequately (for various
reasons, including the detailed habitat presented).
The most natural
interpretation of the key clause Job 40:17 … is that the tail of Behemoth is
compared to a cedar for its great size, and there is nothing in the context
which contradicts this possibility, even though the exact sense of the verb is
extremely difficult to determine.
Consequently, the most
reasonable interpretation (which also takes the whole passage into account) is
that Behemoth was a large animal, now extinct, which had a large tail. Thus
some type of extinct dinosaur should still be considered a perfectly reasonable
possibility according to our present state of knowledge. ….
[End
of quote]
These are all good,
laudable attempts to make sense of ‘Behemoth’ in the Book of Job.
Given the pattern of
the Book of Job, in which the Lord is holding up for Job’s consideration real
animals (mountain goat, donkey, ox, horse, eagle, rooster, ibis, etc.), these
attempts are far preferable, I think, to those that would attempt to make of
Job’s
Behemoth’ and
‘Leviathan’ either mythical creatures, or demons.
I, however, have my own reasons – hopefully also good ones – for
rejecting dinosaurs from the category of animals in the Book of Job.
For one,
the:
Prophet Job did not belong to the Patriarchal or Judges era
(15)
Prophet Job did not belong to the Patriarchal or Judges era
nor was
he king Jobab:
Prophet Job was not the ancient Edomite, Jobab
(15)
Prophet Job was not the ancient Edomite, Jobab
but
lived much later than that - a good half a millennium later than that!
For Job
was Tobias, son of Tobit, of the neo-Assyrian captivity:
Historical Era of the Prophet Job
(15)
Historical Era of the Prophet Job
That, I
think, puts paid to dinosaurs.
Was
‘Behemoth’ an Elephant?
And, secondly, I think that, by ‘’Behemoth’, the Book of Job is
clearly (in hindsight) intending the elephant, an animal that is a popular
choice for ‘Behemoth’ except for the mingy tail factor.
But I think that we may have the elephant the wrong way around.
Job 40:17 is not, I suggest, referring to the animal’s unimpressive
posterius (tail), but, rather, to his highly impressive proboscis, swaying like
a cedar.
Even looking somewhat like a
cedar.
