In that day,
the Lord will punish with his sword—
his fierce, great and powerful sword—
Leviathan the gliding serpent,
Leviathan the coiling serpent;
he will slay the monster of the sea. Isaiah 27:1
his fierce, great and powerful sword—
Leviathan the gliding serpent,
Leviathan the coiling serpent;
he will slay the monster of the sea. Isaiah 27:1
In Job 41, Leviathan was described some sort of water
creature, which some believe was a whale or even a dinosaur. That description holds up in Isaiah too and
Psalm 104 where Leviathan frolics around the ships. But…
It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan and gave it as food to the creatures of
the desert. Psalm 74:14
Leviathan is crushed and the food
goes to the creatures in the desert. So
does Leviathan live in the desert? The
three writers may have had a specific creature in mind, but overall the term
symbolically means “a big massive creature.”
In all three books of the Bible which describe Leviathan, the point is
this: there’s no giant creature on earth that God can’t tame or destroy.
In Isaiah, though, metaphorically it
seems the writer specifically compares the creature to Satan, a serpent, who
God defeats.