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Job

About this book
Chapter 26

1 Then Job replied: 2 “How you have helped the powerless! How you have saved the person who has no strength! 3 How you have advised the one without wisdom, and abundantly revealed your insight! 4 To whom did you utter these words? And whose spirit has come forth from your mouth? 5 “The dead tremble—those beneath the waters and all that live in them.⁠ 6 The underworld is naked before God; the place of destruction lies uncovered. 7 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth on nothing. 8 He locks the waters in his clouds, and the clouds do not burst with the weight of them. 9 He conceals the face of the full moon, shrouding it with his clouds. 10 He marks out the horizon on the surface of the waters as a boundary between light and darkness. 11 The pillars of the heavens tremble⁠ and are amazed at his rebuke.⁠ 12 By his power he stills the sea; by his wisdom he cut Rahab the great sea monster to pieces.⁠ 13 By his breath the skies became fair; his hand pierced the fleeing serpent. 14 Indeed, these are but the outer fringes of his ways! How faint is the whisper we hear of him! But who can understand the thunder of his power?”

Texts in conversation

Compare KTU 1.3 III:38 and Job 26:12

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Job 26 refers to God defeating the sea and a twisting serpent, language that parallels the Baal Cycle where Anat claims to have crushed the gods Ocean, River, and a seven-headed monster. Both similarly describe the defeat of chaos in mythological combat.

Passages

KTU 1.3 III:38

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Watch! Anat sees the gods. Below, her feet start shaking. All around, her limbs are shivering. Up above, her face sweats. Shudders wrack the bones of every limb; the bones within her spine turn weak. She spoke up and cried out, “Why have Gupan and Ugar come here? What enemy rises up against Baal? What rival faces the Cloud-Rider? Didn’t I crush El’s beloved, Yamm (Ocean)? Didn’t I annihilate Nahar (River), the great god? Didn’t I leash Dragon and bind him in a saddle? I crushed the Sinuous Serpent, Encircler, the seven-headed monster. I crushed the gods’ beloved, Arsha. I ravaged El’s young bull, Ataka. I crushed the gods’ she-wolf, Fire. I annihilated El’s daughter, Zabiba. I’ve reaped silver from my fighting; I’ve taken possession of gold of those who drove Baal from the heights of Sapan”
1350–1185 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in KTU

Job 26:12

Hebrew Bible
10 He marks out the horizon on the surface of the waters as a boundary between light and darkness. 11 The pillars of the heavens tremble and are amazed at his rebuke. 12 By his power he stills the sea; by his wisdom he cut Rahab the great sea monster to pieces. 13 By his breath the skies became fair; his hand pierced the fleeing serpent. 14 Indeed, these are but the outer fringes of his ways! How faint is the whisper we hear of him! But who can understand the thunder of his power?”
500–401 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Job

References

"... We may notice another creature parallel to Leviathan, the monster Rahab, an otherwise unknown primordial being ... From the aforementioned texts concerning Leviathan the most that might be concluded is that Leviathan represents a west-Semitic counterpart of Tiamat, the personified chaos of the Babylonians. It is possible, however, that several versions of those cosmogonic myths existed and that the mytholographers made use of them with considerable freedom ..."
Luis I. J. Stadelmann, The Hebrew Conception of the World: A Philological and Literary Study, AnBib 39 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1970), 21.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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KTU 1.3 III:38 and Job 26:12

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