Exploring Insights into the Symbol of Death that Humbles Job and Reveals the Sovereign Creator

When the Lord finally speaks to Job out of the whirlwind he does not offer a tidy explanation for the suffering that has engulfed this righteous man. Instead he turns Job's gaze toward two great creatures and the first of them is Behemoth. The question that has puzzled readers for centuries is simply this: what is the Behemoth in the Book of Job? According to the careful reading offered by Robert Fyall in his study of creation and evil in Job the answer is clear and theologically charged. Behemoth stands as the figure of Death itself, that awesome power which stalks the earth yet remains firmly under the hand of the Creator who alone can master it.

The Context of the Divine Speeches

Fyall insists that the divine speeches in chapters 38 to 41 form the very heart of the book and must control every interpretation of what has gone before. Older commentators sometimes treated these chapters as a kind of afterthought, almost an appendix, yet the weight of the poetry and the theological pressure of the whole work push us in another direction. God does not answer Job's questions with a philosophical treatise on theodicy. He answers by displaying his sovereign mastery over the created order and over the forces that threaten it. In that setting Behemoth appears not as a mere zoological curiosity but as a living symbol that gathers up the earlier threads of Job's agony. The patient Job of the prologue and the anguished Job of the dialogues both find their resolution here because the same Lord who permitted Satan limited access to Job now unveils the deeper reality of death's power and his own greater power over it.

Behold Now Behemoth

The description itself is unforgettable. “Behold now behemoth which I made with thee he eateth grass as an ox” (Job 40:15). Strength is in his loins the sinews of his thighs are knit together his bones are as strong pieces of brass his ribs are like bars of iron. He lies under the shady trees in the covert of the reed and fens the willows of the brook compass him about. He is the chief of the ways of God and only his Maker can approach him with a sword. The picture is one of massive untamed vitality that no human hunter can subdue. Commentators have long debated whether this is a hippopotamus an elephant or even some surviving dinosaur yet such literal identifications though not without interest miss the deeper literary and theological purpose. Fyall argues that the language is deliberately heightened and mythic in tone so that the creature becomes a transparent symbol rather than a specimen in a natural history catalogue.

Behemoth as the Figure of Death

Here Fyall's distinctive claim comes into focus. Behemoth is the figure of Death. The power that can swallow the living and drag them into the dust is given vivid embodiment in this great beast that God alone has made and God alone can control. The prologue has already shown us that death's shadow falls heavily upon Job's household and upon Job's own body. Satan is permitted to stretch forth his hand yet the final boundary remains with the Lord. When God later points Job to Behemoth he is in effect saying that the very force Job has feared and felt is itself a creature under divine command. The descent into the grave that Job has contemplated in his darkest moments finds its counterpart in this creature that dwells among the reeds and yet cannot escape the sovereign word of its Maker. Fyall notes how the imagery of death runs like a dark thread through the earlier poetry only to be gathered up and mastered in the second divine speech. What Job has experienced as an almost personal adversary is now unmasked as something that belongs entirely within the order of creation and therefore within the purposes of the Creator.

The transformation of ancient motifs is important here. The world of Canaanite storytelling knew of powerful underworld figures associated with death and sterility yet the author of Job does not simply borrow those tales. He takes the imaginative power of such imagery and places it firmly under the lordship of Yahweh. The result is neither a denial of death's terror nor a surrender to pagan dualism. Death is real and dreadful but it is not ultimate. The same God who formed Behemoth is the God who will one day swallow up death in victory as the later prophets and apostles would declare. Job is not given a detailed map of the intermediate state or a timetable of the resurrection yet he is given something more foundational: the knowledge that the power which has emptied his house and wasted his flesh is itself subject to the One who speaks from the storm.

Pastoral Weight for the Suffering Believer

This reading carries pastoral weight that we ought not to hurry past. Many of us have stood where Job stood wondering whether the forces arrayed against us have somehow slipped beyond the reach of divine care. The friends of Job offered a mechanical calculus of retribution that left no room for the mystery of unexplained suffering. God offers something far more searching. By pointing to Behemoth he reminds Job and us that even the deepest darkness of death remains within the circle of his creative and governing power. The creature that no man can tame is still the creature that God made and therefore the creature that God can restrain. In that light the cry of faith becomes possible again not because every question has been answered but because the Questioner himself has spoken and shown that nothing not even death stands outside his dominion.

Fyall's approach keeps the whole book together. The prose framework is no mere literary device that can be discarded once the poetry begins. The Satan of the heavenly court and the Behemoth of the final speech belong to the same theological universe. Death is not an independent power that can finally frustrate the purposes of God. It is a formidable servant whose leash remains in the hand of the Almighty. When Job at last replies “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear but now mine eye seeth thee” (Job 42:5) he has seen more than majesty in the abstract. He has seen the Lord who rules even over the figure of Death and that vision is enough to turn protest into repentance and despair into quiet trust.

The Behemoth of Job then is no mere animal of the Jordan marshes. In Fyall's reading it is Death itself given dramatic form so that the sufferer may look upon the last enemy and discover that even this enemy is the Lord's. The one who made Behemoth with us is the one who will not abandon us to its power. That is the word the whirlwind still speaks to every generation that finds itself walking through the valley of the shadow.

Bibliography

Fyall, Robert. Now My Eyes Have Seen You: Images of Creation and Evil in the Book of Job. New Studies in Biblical Theology 12. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2002.

What Is the Behemoth in the Book of Job? Death Personified in God's Final Speech