Leviathan is the great primordial sea-monster of Hebrew tradition — a colossal serpent-dragon of the deep, untamable and terrible, whom God alone can master. The mightiest of the chaos-beasts, Leviathan embodies the raw, churning power of the primeval ocean and the limits of human strength before the works of the Creator.
The Terror of the Deep
Scripture describes Leviathan in awestruck, fearful language. In the Book of Job, God himself challenges the proud: “Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook?” The creature’s scales are his pride, “shut up together as with a close seal”; from his mouth go burning torches, and sparks of fire leap out; smoke pours from his nostrils, and his breath kindles coals. “Upon earth there is not his like, a creature without fear. He beholds everything that is high; he is king over all the children of pride.” No weapon can pierce him, no man can subdue him — only his Maker.
The Chaos-Serpent
Leviathan’s roots reach back to the ancient Near Eastern myths of the chaos-dragon of the sea, the primeval enemy of order — kin to [rahab], the other great sea-monster of Hebrew lore, and to the dragons that the Creator subdues at the world’s beginning. The Psalms recall how God “broke the heads of Leviathan in pieces” and crushed the sea-monsters in the act of creation, taming the wild waters and establishing the order of the world. Leviathan thus stands for the chaos that the divine power conquers and holds in check.
The Feast at the End of Days
Jewish tradition gave Leviathan a startling destiny. In the rabbinic imagination, God created Leviathan and a mate, but slew the female lest the pair multiply and destroy the world, preserving her flesh. At the end of days, in the messianic age, Leviathan will be slain — doing battle with the land-monster [behemoth] until both fall — and its flesh will be served as the great feast of the righteous, while its hide is stretched to make their canopy. So the monster of chaos becomes, at the last, the banquet of the redeemed. In Leviathan, Hebrew tradition gave its grandest form to the untamable deep — the dragon that only God can bind, and that the end of time will turn from terror into triumph.