- published: 05 Apr 2016
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Behemoth ( /bɨˈhiːməθ/ or /ˈbiː.əməθ/, also /ˈbeɪ.əmɔːθ/; Hebrew בהמות, behemoth (modern: behemot)) is a mythological beast mentioned in Job 40:15-24.Metaphorically, the name has come to be used for any extremely large or powerful entity.
Job 40 is an example of the use of a plural noun suffix to mean "great", rather than plural. The feminine plural Hebrew noun behemoth is also used in Joel 1:20.
Job 40:15-24 describes Behemoth, and then the sea-monster Leviathan, to demonstrate to Job the futility of questioning God, who alone has created these beings and who alone can capture them. Some believe both beasts are chaos monsters destroyed by the deity at the time of creation, although such a conflict is not found in the creation account.
Leviathan is identified figuratively with both the primeval sea (Job 3:8, Psalms 74:13) and in apocalyptic literature - describing the end-time - as that adversary, the Devil, from before creation who will finally be defeated. In the divine speeches in Job, Behemoth and Leviathan may both be seen as composite and mythical creatures with enormous strength, which humans like Job could not hope to control. But both are reduced to the status of divine pets, with rings through their noses and Leviathan on a leash.
Sometimes when I visit the landscapes of the shadows
Something that recalls the grave
Hides in the hellish depths and awaits
When I dream, it peeks into empty goblet
(and) becomes the wine of ecstasy and licentiousness
I know the one in a flock said: "Watch out, watch out"
But I will not go away till I taste the sweetness of your body
No matter it poisons and causes death
The past is like an eternal funeral
Years, thousands of them, I rotted in a monastic cell
I resembled a stone, hiding my murderous self in silence and fear
I lasted in the infinity of meditations and contamplations
Waiting for the deserved dream, there on the holy land
And its taste and coldness I remember
Bare-foot digging my own pit
I was kissing it as if the sweetest lover and begged
But was the sandto become my salvation
Or worms the people on the court of light
The past reeks of an oak coffin, so wet and old
Burning dirty claws in the wooden eyes of Jehova
I killed mercy, spotting on the laws of god
I celebrated the birth of power
I fall in love with freedom and the beast
And I spat out the Antichrist from my morbid womb
In order to give life to alvine grain
And concentrate the birth of human tragedy & destruction
I envisaged myself as a great magician
Althought they called armageddon the whore
Today I celebrate my birth, though I am elder than the world
The past only sometimes is like the sind