Have you ever heard of the ancient sea monsters in the Bible? If not, you're missing out, so listen to this episode, where we discuss how we can handle things that seem so weird or foreign to us that we read about. How we choose to do so can make an enormous difference in how we see God, ourselves, and the message of the scriptures. This is a fun test case.
Have you ever heard of the ancient sea monsters in the Bible? If not, you're missing out, so listen to this episode, where we discuss how we can handle things that seem so weird or foreign to us that we read about. How we choose to do so can make an enormous difference in how we see God, ourselves, and the message of the scriptures. This is a fun test case.
Welcome back to The Willing Fool. I'm your host and lead fool, Paul Trimble. Thanks for joining. As promised, today we're going to delve into a little quick Bible study on monsters. Not because I just love monsters, although they're cool, but because they're a great test case in reading texts that, when we read them, we think, what is this even talking about?
We don't really have the context for, we don't share the cultural context that the ancient writers of these scriptures and the original readers shared. So we're kind of outsiders. We're peeking in. We're wondering what's going on here. Are we supposed to now believe in these monsters? If not, what do we do with that?
How do we read the scripture and take it seriously? Those sorts of relevant questions. So, it's a safe, I feel, a somewhat safe test case scenario. I might find out otherwise. But let's just jump in. I'm going to start in Isaiah 27. read a handful of scriptures today. And you'll see how they relate to each other.
They all focus and revolve around this key theme of monsters that appear in the scriptures. Isaiah 27 verse 1 says, On that day, the Lord, with his harsh, great, and strong sword, will bring judgment on Leviathan, the fleeing serpent. Leviathan, the twisting serpent. He will slay the monster that is in the sea.
Alright, so here you have, a picture of God defeating in some sort of battle with a sword. This Leviathan creature is described as a fleeing serpent and a twisting serpent. I'm not an expert on this, but from what I understand, This was a, commonly imagined, understood creature that was chaotic or represented chaos that a god would have had to defeat.
To bring order to the cosmos. And so in this scripture, it is Yahweh. It's the God represented in the scripture. Who is pictured as defeating leviathan. And, this is set in the future. It's saying on that day. On a day in the future so, let's not read too much into it there.
I know some people have wanted to identify Leviathan with a creature of the sea. That we still have around today, it is an existing animal species. I'm not sure that'll hold in the long run, but if you want to try to make a go of it, you can. But I'm just going to keep going to the next scripture, and this is on Isaiah 51, and I've handpicked these scriptures because they fit the topic of what we're talking about.
All right, so this is Isaiah 51 verse 9, Wake up, wake up, put on the strength of the Lord's power. Wake up as in days past, as in generations of long ago. Wasn't it you who hacked Rahab to pieces, who pierced the sea monster?
Wasn't it you who dried up the sea, and it's God in view here, that's the you, who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the seabed into a road? For the redeemed to pass over, and the redeemed of the Lord will return, and come to Zion with singing, crowned with unending joy. Joy and sadness will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee.
All right, so, similar but different. Here you have God pictured as hacking this sea monster, who is now not called Leviathan, but is in fact called Rahab, So you might think, okay, well, maybe it's just a different name for the same or a similar type creature, understood in the ancient Near East to, be a foe to God to represent chaos or be chaos.
And you have God defeating him, similar to the last scripture, Isaiah 27. This one's different. It's in the past. But then we get this. Slightly different thread with wasn't it you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep who made the seabed into a road for the redeemed to pass over.
So this is still seems to be in the past. But if you listen to that language, you might think of a well known biblical image or story. Where was the sea dried up? Where did the waters of the great deep dry up? And into a road for God's redeemed, the people of God that are redeemed, to pass over. Well, that actually sounds like the image of the Israelites.
So, maybe this is not some mythical, wrestling match between God and this monster. Maybe this is representing God's saving action in overcoming the oppression and obstacle that the Egyptians posed to God's people and God's plan. Hebrews, emerging from Egypt, going towards the promised land. That's certainly what the language seems to be talking about, but that would mean that Rahab in this case, the enemy is not so much, a cosmic monster or mythological monster, but, but something representing or connected with Egypt.
Well, that's very different than just the idea of a cosmic monster that we, Imagined or hypothesized in Isaiah 27. Well, if I flip back to Isaiah 30, all these have been in Isaiah so far. And I'm going to skip to chapter 30, verse 7.
Egypt's help is completely worthless. Therefore I call her Rahab, who just sits. So, if you were going looking for evidence that Rahab, in fact, represented Egypt, here you would, you would find your evidence. There's Egypt being called Rahab. So that lends a little bit of weight to, the idea that Rahab in Isaiah 51 is, representing Egypt, or stands for Egypt.
So which is it? Is it this cosmic monster? This chaos monster that God defeated? In the, you know, premeable past, prehistory. Or is it God defeating Egypt, at a more recent time in the, in the past? Well, maybe the jury's still out on that. I'm gonna keep going. This is Job 26. Job 26.
Says, He stretches, talking of God, He stretches the northern skies over empty space. He hangs the earth on nothing. He wraps up the waters in his clouds, yet the clouds do not burst beneath their weight. He obscures the view of his throne, spreading his cloud over it. He laid out the horizon on the surface of the waters, at the boundary between light and darkness.
The pillars that hold up the sky tremble. astounded at his rebuke. By his power, he stirred the sea, and by his understanding, he crushed Rahab. By his breath, the heavens gained their beauty. His hand pierced the fleeing serpent. Alright, so here you have a similar language.
You've got Rahab, you've got God overcoming or destroying or conquering Rahab. You've got this description of Rahab being a fleeing serpent sounds like that that cosmic chaos monster But it doesn't seem as I see it to be referencing the historical event with Egypt And the Hebrews emerging from Egypt.
It seems like it's more back to this primeval Chaos monster, you know deathmatch type thing. Um, so where do you go with all this? It's, it's the, the images and how we would interpret them seem to be somewhat consistent, but also very hard to simply line up and clearly categorize as The, the Chaos Monster or Egypt Preval past or recent past, uh, Rahab versus Leviathan.
There's all these sort of blurred, uh, boundaries or categories for these terms that we're reading. Also, if you notice there, you've got the. The cosmic imagery of pillars that hold up the sky. So, I don't know about you. I'm not used to thinking of the way the universe is built as including pillars holding up the sky.
But that's the way, that's the way that they understood the universe to be constructed. And I can read that and I can understand, okay. If that's the way I thought, then that's the language that I would use. The pillars are, are holding up the sky. And how does that relate to God, who's in charge of everything?
So, one more scripture. Psalm 80, uh, actually two more scriptures. We're gonna go to Psalm 74. You didn't know there was this many scriptures, did you? About Leviathan and Rahab. I didn't either. Took me a while to piece them all together. So, Psalm 74, verse 12. God, my king is from ancient times performing, saving acts on the earth.
You divided the sea with your strength. You smashed the heads of the sea, monsters in the waters. You crushed the heads of the leviathan. You fed him to the creatures of the desert. You opened up springs and streams. You dried up ever flowing rivers. And it goes on from there, and there's some language before and after about enemies of God and the people being oppressed.
So in this case, you're back to the Leviathan terminology, not Rahab. In immediate context, it seems like closer to the primeval cosmological death match or wrestling match between God and Leviathan. But you've got some hints there that, you know, maybe it's talking about. God overcoming oppressors on behalf of his people that he's redeeming.
Um, again, some hints, some ambiguity. Which category are we in? It's very hard to say. Psalm 89 is the last one I'll read.
Lord, the heavens praise your wonders. Your faithfulness also in the assembly of the holy ones. For who in the skies can compare with the Lord? Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord? God is greatly feared in the council of the holy ones. More awe inspiring than all who surround him, Lord God of hosts, who is strong like you?
Your faithfulness surrounds you. You rule the raging sea. When its waves surge, you still them. You crushed Rahab like one who is slain. You scatter your enemies with your powerful arm. And it goes on from there. So here, just one more time, an image of God crushing Rahab, an enemy. Uh, one who is, is slain. And there's some also interesting language and terminology earlier in the passage as I read it.
But we don't have time in this episode to get to it, but we will a little bit later. So, zooming out, what have I done? Have I created any clarity for you? I've probably just introduced a whole lot more confusion. and ambiguity. Um, but that is actually part of the point for this episode is that the scriptures, when you look at them yourself, you can see that, okay, there's Rahab, there's Leviathan.
They seem to be, if not the same, very overlapping in what they represent. There's this seeming idea of a chaos monster that God had to defeat to bring his good creation into order. That is an idea that was shared with other cultures of the time, of the biblical writers. So it's not something I don't think that was purely invented by the biblical writers or just that they were zapped with this cosmic history knowledge by God.
I think that what's being worked with is the ideas that were present at the time, that existed at the time, that were popular and known. Was it just ancient or was it more recent history? That seems to be an open question. It could be that it's some sort of combination where the overarching idea is God overcomes chaos and imposes his own desires and order.
And yeah, you've got the chaos monster as sort of the overarching symbol of that. But then you've got, at any point, if there's an enemy that's doing the same sort of thing, creating chaos, opposing God's goodness and creation and order, then God can oppose and destroy them as well. Just as he humbled Egypt during the Exodus.
So it could apply to both levels. Is it past, ancient past? Recent past or even future. The first scripture we read seemed to be something that would happen in the future. Well, I guess that's a possible as well, isn't it? You can have a Enemy who is defeated at multiple stages at multiple points in time and it may not have to be one time only we can we might refer to an opponent as Taking a fall at different times in our, ongoing tension or opposition with that, that person or that foe, so and so fell.
Maybe if you hate a football team, you'd say, ah, they fell again, they failed again. It's not necessarily a one time only event. So I think we, we have things we can draw on to understand that not everything can be put in a clean, neat category. Alright, so, sometimes you've got to give up a little clarity to gain some clarity.
So, the clarity you're giving up here is being able to cleanly categorize everything. The clarity you're gaining is, alright, here's several related terms, and here's a variety of things that they can mean, and ways that they tend to be used, and what they communicate to you about God in general. So, hopefully that makes a little sense.
Now you might think, well, what do I do with this if a biblical writer is using this terminology, does that mean I need to take it and believe it in the most literal sense possible? Um, well, I hope not. And that's, again, if I'm, if I'm assuming that I'm a Bible believing person, and my intention is to take at face value things I see in the Bible, take the best way I can, things I see in the Bible.
Um, do I have to take that on board? Do I have to fit that into my understanding of the world, my belief system? I think and I hope that the answer is no, because I don't really know what to do with these sea monsters. After reading this... I do not now suddenly, um, have in my understanding of the universe, ancient sea monsters that I think God physically wrestled and killed.
I don't know if all the biblical writers believe that or not, um, if they did, and if that's what they're trying to convince me of, then I feel like that's a little bit of pressure on me to think, well, what am I going to do with that? If that's the point of the scripture, that this is the... The history of the universe then then that applies some pressure to me and I have to figure out what to do with that But of course that's not really the only way to take this I mean, it's possible that they did believe this because this is sort of the standard understanding of their culture but what the main thrust of what they're communicating is god's relationship to bringing order versus chaos and nothingness.
And if that's the case, then maybe I can sort of parse the two, um, the understanding of the literal monster versus the understanding of God's way of bringing order and his authority over anything that would threaten that, including people and nations and events. Um, I could parse that or it's possible that the biblical writers.
weren't so much focused on the literality of these creatures. Um, even if they didn't believe in them, I mean there's a middle ground where you don't really question something, it's just what you're handed and it's your categories, it's your terminology and your language and you're not really asking if it's literal because that's not a question that's pressing upon you.
You're simply using your understanding. And the language at your disposal to communicate, uh, what you think is important. In this case, about God and about people. And if that's the case, then, then maybe there's not so much pressure that I gotta figure out what to do with that. I can simply do my best to look through the eyes of the writers.
And say, what are they seeing? What are they saying? What are they trying to communicate? And not get hung up unnecessarily in the literalization, the category of, of these sea creatures in this case. But to be able to focus on what's being highlighted, which is God's role in bringing order, being in charge, having the authority and the strength and the power to defeat anything that would stand in his way, including a chaos monster.
And if that's what I'm being asked to consider and see and hear, then that's where my focus needs to be. And so I think this is a little. Fairly safe test case for, when I go to the scriptures, of course I'm entering a world that's not my world. It's not my worldview. It's these sea monster things are very foreign.
I only think about them through the lens of the scripture. I don't think about them in the rest of my life typically, but that's okay. That's like putting on 3D goggles to go to the theater. Like, let me see what is being done and being said. And. I don't have to render a judgment so quickly and figure out how and if this can fit into my worldview.
I'm going to try to look through their worldview and see what they're saying about God, about me, about this story, that's being presented in the scripture as a whole. And sometimes that means sort of, unfocusing your eyes and relinquishing your judgment muscles, relaxing your judgment muscles and relaxing your.
You're focused of your eyes to see in this case, multiple passages, multiple scriptures. And what's the overall gist you get from the whole rather than just locking in on one and trying to pin down the specific categories for everything. Because if you did that in this case. You'd probably just go crazy and it wouldn't really benefit you, but if you relax your eyes, you look at the whole mosaic, you can start to see how these things function.
And that's, that's maybe the best thing to learn is, okay, whether I believe in a literal CMOS or not, how is this functioning within the text? And what is that telling me? What am I supposed to draw away from that? And if I can get that, then, I'm getting the point. So I hope that's a relatively helpful and again, just a simple test case.
We're going to dig into Meteor things and things more connected with sort of the premise and thesis of the whole podcast season starting in the next episode. So thanks for joining. See you next time.