The secret identity of Job’s Leviathan
Tradition’s pervasive attempts to chronicle Job’s life, sometime between 1995 B.C. C. and 1520 a. C., will be grudgingly calculated at best. We question conventional chronological assignments to the origins, affinity, and purpose of Job and Behemoth. The discrepancy between traditional proposals and reality is so great that it does not work with other symbolisms.
To get a sense of Job’s existential perspective as he sits down to discuss theology with his friends, we find him distracted by an image of Satan: an entity given power to affect Job’s life. Misfortune then befalls Job, but he maintains his spiritual integrity even though he flavors his speech with self-righteousness. God’s spirit then addresses Job’s lack of power over the Beast, and which Beast has great power over the elements; however, God, rather than Job, has the power to ‘make’ Job and the Beast, have control over them, and have the means to destroy them both. Job, then, is put in his place, reaffirms his faith, prospers, lives to old age, and promises to live for the Messiah. Job wins the battle, somehow; but he only wins after an omnipotent God humbles Job’s self-confidence. He denigrates Job’s lack of dominion over the Behemoth that God made with Job (done at the same time Job [Job 40:15]).
We find that tradition is at fault by misjudging Job’s time frame by a large margin, by around 1200 to 1800 years! Surely such unscholarly exegesis justifies serious mistrust of traditional interpretations. Behemoth’s identity and relationship of him to Job receives a gross misinterpretation in mainstream circles, even in today’s perceived enlightenment. The conventional failure to intercept Job’s proximity to messianic actuality, resurrection, judgment, and soteriological fulfillment conveys a similar failure to connect with Paul’s admission in AD 68, and which is revealed in II Timothy 1:10. .Forks now manifested by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ,…“‘Now’ and ‘appearing’ carry very revealing present tense semantics, compared to the future tense in I Timothy 6:14 (AD 65),’until the apparition’, written three years earlier!
The writing style and expressions of faith in Job Chapter Nineteen reveal a prophetic revelation announcing the installation of the Messiah, to be ‘witnessed in the last years of Job’. The reference also includes a herbivorous leviathan, whose actions and susceptibilities suggest persons, albeit hidden in Beast symbolism. Internal evidence inherent to a date well after the Patriarchal Era; traditionally, this Age is postulated as the starting point for Jobian chronological determinations, but it is several hundred years premature. Furthermore, Job’s prose contains subtle hints of a Jordan River habitat, not unlike geographic scenes compatible with a much later era.
Bible scholars have put forward countless theories as to the identity of the Behemoth in Job 40:15. A late 20th century church bulletin in this author’s possession suggests that Behemoth represents a dinosaur. If we accept this identification, or other assignments that suggest the Beast’s input is a hippopotamus, elephant, crocodile, etc., then we will have allowed traditional invention to supersede common sense.
The events, the ages, and the chosen people appear consistently in historical conformity, customary in the Hebrew writing style. If we adjust our understanding to his consistent writing style and sound reasoning, then Job lived after Ezekiel’s time: Ezekiel was a contemporary of Daniel, who died around 500 B.C. Hebrew script format; tentatively, we expect Job to have lived sometime within the confines of the Exilic Age, in the Sixth Hebrew Age, sometime after 516 B.C. C. How did Ezekiel know about Job around 590 B.C. C.? The answer arises in another question: How did he know that ‘every man’s sword would be against his brother’ (600 years to his future, Gog of Magog, Ez. 38:21)? Undoubtedly, Job lived after Daniel.
In Job 1:1, the text places Job’s residence in the town of Uz. Uz must be recognized as a symbolic substitute for Judah, albeit a perverse designation. The determination of Job’s residence is made with such ease; it seems terribly implicated. How is it possible that the definition has not been questioned for so long?
Reassessing the words contained in Job 19:25-:28 leads us to the conclusion: Job’s place in history is not as ancient as once thought. In 19:25-:26, according to Job’s own words, he expects to see the Messiah in person, with his own eyes, in his old age and in the ‘last days’. He continues, paraphrasing 19:27: ‘I’ll see for myself; my eyes shall see, and shall not turn away.’ Job expected to see the Messiah, though his skin would have grown old and wrinkled, and his mind senile, around AD 30.
Job was born in the last and sixth quarter of the Hebrew Age, and lived until the first century AD; Domiciled in Judea, he lived not far from the Temple of Jerusalem. More importantly, we need to determine Behemoth’s identity; because he did not resemble four-footed animals, but was identified with the interchangeability of beasts detailed in Revelation 13 and 17. Job represented a part of the Beast, one of the definition of Beast constituting the mass, like Judeans and as children of Israel. Job’s tribulations, according to the collected evidence, occurred around 100 B.C.
Job 42:3 admits things terrible to understanding, paraphrased: ‘therefore I say things I do not understand; these things are too wonderful for me, that I did not know.’ Even so, we present all of Job’s exposition and historical precedents in a new and harmonious interpretation; now, everyone can sift through the evidence and determine the real protagonists involved in those vignettes that comprise the mysterious cabal and Job’s problems. In Job’s confession, we discover why the testimony of the Old Testament is beyond the casual reading of the layman. If Job failed to understand his own testimony, then how can modern materialists hope to do adequate exegesis of Job’s time frame, Behemoth’s identity, and to penetrate cause and effect manifesting in the incentives of humanity? faith?
Even in the uncertainty of Job’s musings, this author believes his own calculation of the time frame and Behemoth’s assignment to be above reproach and beyond all available commentary. It’s up to you!