Leviathan

August 9

“He beholds every high thing; he is king over the children of pride,” Job 41:34.

“Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope? Can you put a cord through its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook? Will it keep begging you for mercy? Will it speak to you with gentle words? Will it make an agreement with you for you to take it as your slave for life? Can you make a pet of it like a bird or put it on a leash for the young women in your house?

“Will traders barter for it? Will they divide it up among the merchants? Can you fill its hide with harpoons or its head with fishing spears? If you lay a hand on it, you will remember the struggle and never do it again! Any hope of subduing it is false; the mere sight of it is overpowering. No one is fierce enough to rouse it. Who then is able to stand against me? Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.

“I will not fail to speak of Leviathan’s limbs, its strength and its graceful form. Who can strip off its outer coat? Who can penetrate its double coat of armor? Who dares open the doors of its mouth, ringed about with fearsome teeth? Its back has rows of shields tightly sealed together; each is so close to the next that no air can pass between. They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted. Its snorting throws out flashes of light; its eyes are like the rays of dawn. Flames stream from its mouth; sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke pours from its nostrils as from a boiling pot over burning reeds. Its breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from its mouth.

“Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. The folds of its flesh are tightly joined; they are firm and immovable. Its chest is hard as rock, hard as a lower millstone.


When it rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before its thrashing. The sword that reaches it has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin. Iron it treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood. Arrows do not make it flee; sling stones are like chaff to it. A club seems to it but a piece of straw; it laughs at the rattling of the lance.

“Its undersides are jagged potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge. It makes the depths churn like a boiling cauldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment. It leaves a glistening wake behind it; one would think the deep had white hair.


Nothing on earth is its equal—a creature without fear. It looks down on all that are haughty; it is king over all that are proud.”

Leviathan, the mighty beast, terrible in its allure and in its monstrous intent is much afoot today. The evil one described in Job 41 still “goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour,” I Peter 5:8. We who “live and move and have our being,” Acts 17:28, must be ever mindful that there is a terrible foe whose desire is to destroy us, to destroy our relationship with Christ, to destroy our witness among men.

And in being mindful of his ploys, we must ever remember that “He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world,” I John 4:4. No matter how much satan rages, we will not be defeated, for we are “more than conquerors through Christ who loves us,” Romans 8:37.