the names of Leviathan and Behemoth. 271 



generation : ask thy father, and he will shew thee, the elders, 

 and they will tell thee." Job xxix. 6, " When I washed my 

 steps w r ith butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil 

 with Deuteronomy xxxii. 13, 14, " He made him to suck honey 

 out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock ; butter of kine." 

 Job xiv. 17, " My transgression is sealed up in a bag, and thou 

 sewest up mine iniquity," with Deuteronomy xxxii. 34, " Is not 

 this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my trea- 

 sures ?" in which last it appears from the context, that it is the 

 iniquity of the heathen that is sealed up in the treasures of God, 

 waiting vengeance and recompence. The image is the same in 

 Job in reference to his own sins. We have satisfactory evidence, 

 then, that Job was written prior to the time of Moses, inde- 

 pendently of the great argument of all the commentators in behalf 

 of that position, " that there is in Job nowhere any allusion to 

 the Exod of the Israelites, or the peculiarities of the Mosaic in- 

 stitutions." 



Thus, then, we learn that the book of Job was written at 

 least nearly a thousand years before the time of Ezekiel, and 

 twelve hundred before that of Herodotus. W ould it, then, be 

 more safe for us to hazard the conjecture, that the author of 

 Job was acquainted with the arts of destroying the Crocodile, 

 known to these later workers, than it would be consistent with 

 the fact to assert, for instance, that Pliny was aware of the art 

 of capturing the northern whales, because, a thousand years af- 

 ter his time, we find the Basques practising that art ? 



The only objection thus failing, we arrive at the conclusion, 

 that the Leviathan of the Scriptures is the Crocodile of the Nile. 

 We would add a concluding remark in reference to that term, 

 which is, that it is not the only Hebrew- one into which the more 

 extensively applicable term than enters as a part. We have 

 found another in Deut. xxxii. 33, Pethan or Phethan, which is 

 not of unfrequent occurrence in other passages. A poisonous 

 power is often ascribed to Pethan ; and as it maj be interpreted 

 than of the mouth, it may have got its name from the circum- 

 stance of its inflicting its venom by its bite. As to Leviathan, 

 that is strictly joined or coupled than ; and the name may have 

 a reference to the manner in which the scales, or mail-plates, of 

 the Crocodile are joined together, as so admirably described in 



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