Here in Job the plural word is treated as singular. The reason for that has to do with the point being made in the context. The Behemoth is mentioned as a specially amazing creature in certain ways. God is impressing Job with the magnificence of the things he had created. Here in Job we have an example of a special use of the plural form which is a common feature of the Hebrew language.
However, one particular kind of animal seems to be the object here. God was asking him to consider the amazing wonder of this particular animal he had made. We do not have a taxonomic dictionary of how specific animals were referred to in the time of Job.
They did not have a classification system with formally accepted names for each genus and species as we have today.
We can only rely upon the context which determines the meaning of each use of the word. The challenge is to properly understand each part of the description. Behold, his strength in his loins, and his power in the muscles of his belly.
He makes his tail stiff like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like bars of iron. He is the first of the works of God; let him who made him bring near his sword! For the mountains yield food for him where all the wild beasts play. Under the lotus plants he lies, in the shelter of the reeds and in the marsh. For his shade the lotus trees cover him; the willows of the brook surround him.
Behold, if the river is turbulent he is not frightened; he is confident though Jordan rushes against his mouth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.
You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. Behold, Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon, with beautiful branches and forest shade, and of towering height, its top among the clouds.
So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Bless the Lord , O my soul! O Lord my God, you are very great! You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent.
He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters; he makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind; he makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire.
He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved. Smoke went up from his nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth; glowing coals flamed forth from him. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years,. And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.
She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems.
His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place.
He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John,. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near. John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood A Maskil of Asaph. O God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture? Remember your congregation, which you have purchased of old, which you have redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage!
Remember Mount Zion, where you have dwelt. Direct your steps to the perpetual ruins; the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary! Your foes have roared in the midst of your meeting place; they set up their own signs for signs. They were like those who swing axes in a forest of trees. Do you observe the calving of the does? Can you number the months that they fulfill, and do you know the time when they give birth, when they crouch, bring forth their offspring, and are delivered of their young?
In other words, Earth became without form and void Hebrew tohu and bohu —implying it was not always in this state of total disrepair.
The Bible reveals two creations—the first, in Genesis ; and the second, from Genesis onwards. The Bible does not reveal how long ago this initial creation took place. During this time, dinosaurs and other animals were created and may have lived and died for tens or hundreds of millions of years prior to Earth becoming so destroyed it could no longer support life. But following this mass extinction event, geologists note something amazing about the fossil record.
In these more recent deposits, they only find the fossils of modern-type animals like mammals and birds, as well as modern plants. Vertebrate palaeontologist Dr. The sudden change in the fossil record from the Age of Reptiles to the Age of Mammals is well known and undisputed. Simpson wrote:. It is as if the curtain were rung down suddenly on the stage where all the leading roles were taken by reptiles, especially dinosaurs in great numbers and bewildering variety, and rose again immediately to reveal the same setting but an entirely new cast, a cast in which the dinosaurs do not appear at all, other reptiles are mere supernumaries and the leading parts are all played by mammals.
Why is all this important? It did not exist in the pre-Adamic world that was dominated by the giant, reptile-like dinosaurs and other strange creatures. It was a unique creature created with man—for a specific purpose. For example, sauropod dinosaurs are characterized by their almost comically tiny-looking heads perched atop extremely long necks. Scientists say their heads were so small that they were probably among the least intelligent of dinosaurs.
Prior to this time, they did not exist. The geological record confirms it. There is not a single fossilized example of human bones being found with dinosaur bones. And as far as the purported petroglyph art in Utah depicting dinosaurs, that has been thoroughly disproven too. Many modern scholars and theistic evolutionists realize that the Earth is far older than 6, years. They know that dinosaurs did not live at the same time as man.
These Old Earth believers also have an interpretation of the beast described in Job. Most of these Bible apologists say the behemoth—which, in Hebrew, literally means four-legged beast—is referring to an elephant, hippopotamus or crocodile. The gaping mouth of the hippo provides a pretty compelling picture. However, there are two problems with this theory, and they apply to elephants too.
Second, Job describes the behemoth as being so massive that man cannot control it. These descriptions could obviously not apply to any animals alive today. People have been hunting and killing these animals as far back as recorded history. There are ancient pictographs of Egyptians hunting hippos and crocodiles. And people have been domesticating elephants for work and warfare for thousands of years. In , a British scientist was dumbfounded when he found massive bones from what appeared to be an enormous, previously unknown type of rhinoceros.
The bones were so huge that they made elephant bones look small. For almost a decade, the creature remained an enigma because no further investigation was carried out. Then, after the end of World War I, additional discoveries began to emerge. A true picture of the beast of Baluchistan began to take shape. In , a team of French scientists returned to Baluchistan to conduct further fossil hunts. The results were astounding. The creatures were confirmed to be an extinct, gigantic, hornless rhinoceros!
Estimates suggest it stood 5. From nose to rump it measured a whopping 9 meters. By comparison, the biggest elephant ever recorded stood only 4 meters at the shoulder; the tallest known giraffe measured in at only 6 meters tall. Based on its bone size and length, the baluchitherium may have weighed a gargantuan 20 tons—equivalent to about three African elephants.
Its long legs also probably made it faster than any elephant or smaller species of rhinoceros. This mammal was so big and strong that after adolescence, it probably had no natural predators. No animal could touch it.
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