named Behemoth in the Scriptures. 315 



" Behold now behemoth, whom I made with thee. He 

 feedeth on the grass like the ox. Behold now his strength 

 is in his loins ; his vigour in the muscles of his belly. He 

 plieth his tail, which is like a cedar ; the sinews of his thighs 

 are braced together ; his ribs are like unto pipes of copper ; 

 his bone like a bar of iron. He is the chief of the works of 

 God. He that made him hath fastened on his weapon. The 

 rising lands supply him with food. All the beasts of the field 

 there are made a mock of. He sheltereth himself under the 

 shady trees ; in the coverts of the trees and in ooze. The 

 branches tremble as they cover him ; the willows of the stream 

 while they hang over him. Behold, the eddy may press, he 

 will not hurry himself: he is secure though the river rise 

 against his mouth. Though any one attempt to take him 

 with a net, through the meshes he "will pierce with his snout." 



Here is clearly the description of an immense amphibious 

 animal, and, had not former writers on the subject been under 

 the impression that the crocodile was the only saurian of 

 sufficient size to answer the description, and that the leviathan 

 was the crocodile, I doubt not they would have concluded 

 that the behemoth was a saurian animal, not the hippopo- 

 tamus. Assuming it, then, to have been a saurian or lizard- 

 formed animal, let us see how Job's description tallies with the 

 iguanodon. 



I have, in discoursing on the leviathan, noticed that the 

 descriptionist, presuming that that common saurian, the cro- 

 codile, was well known to his Hebrew readers, dwelling so 

 near the Nile, would naturally enough describe the saurian he 

 designated by the name of leviathan, by contrasting it with the 

 better known crocodile, pointing out the most striking differ- 

 ences between the two; and accordingly, he, alluding tothemode 

 in which crocodiles are ensnared, commences with showing 

 their futility when applied to the leviathan ; thus contrasting 

 the size and strength of the crocodile with that of the leviathan 

 or megalosaurus, and so conveying an idea of the power and 

 size of the latter animal to his reader's minds. In the same 

 way, I think, he proceeds to contrast the behemoth or igua- 

 nodon with better known animals, to convey an idea of it to 

 his readers. And first, its form being that of an immense 

 lizard, he commences with noticing a remarkable circumstance 

 in which the behemoth differed from all the large lizards 

 known to his readers, namely, in the nature of its food : the 

 crocodile and leviathan were carnivorous saurians ; but the 

 saurian called behemoth, on the contrary, was herbivorous. 

 " He feedeth on grass like the ox." You will have noticed 

 that Mantell and Cuvier, who seem never to have dreamt of 



