Behemoth’s Penis,Yahweh’s Might: Competing Bodies in the Book of Job

Introduction

Job 40-41 describe two great beasts: Leviathan and Behemoth. Though the domain of the Leviathan was in the seas, ¹ Behemoth was a creature of both land and water. ² Together, the pairing dominate the world ³ – until the God of Israel steps in and subdues them. But the nature of Behemoth in particular is difficult to discern. Unlike the Leviathan, who is attested as a primordial sea monster elsewhere in biblical literature and in Ugaritic texts, ⁴ Behemoth is found only here in the Hebrew Bible. Because of this, some scholars argue that the creature was an invention of the author of the book of Job (e.g., Habel, 1985: 559). Nevertheless, there are clear connections to mythopoetic traditions elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitic literature, in which the chief deity engages in battle with a sea creature, ⁵ and the most obvious interpretation is therefore to take the pairing as primordial monsters. On the other hand, many scholars undercut the mythological aspects of the tradition and instead argue that Behemoth refers to a more mundane creature, usually a hippopotamus, crocodile, or a water buffalo. ⁶

In this context, the description of Behemoth in vv. 15–18 is crucial for interpreting the nature of the beast. According to the New Revised Standard Version, these verses should be translated as follows:

Look at Behemoth,

which I made just as I made you;

it eats grass like an ox.

Its strength is in its loins,

and its power in the muscles of its belly.

It makes its tail stiff like a cedar;

the sinews of its thighs are knit together.

Its bones are tubes of bronze,

its limbs like bars of iron (vv. 15-18).

But depending upon the particular viewpoint of the scholar, this rather obscure description can be made to conform to either interpretation. Thus for Brian Doak (2015: 278), “[n]othing about the Behemoth (40.15-24) needs to be read as particularly non-realistic for a biological animal.” On the other hand, although Michael Fox (2012: 261) interprets this description as referring to a hippopotamus, he nevertheless notes that this reference to the beast’s “tail” is surprising given that the tail of the hippopotamus is actually rather short, at about 45 cm.” In fact, the focus on these verses as providing a comprehensive description of either a mundane animal or mythic monster obscures other aspects of the description that are crucial for understanding the text’s implications and intentions. These verses can be interpreted as a waṣf, a literary technique known elsewhere in biblical and ancient Near Eastern literature for describing the body. But rather than a straightforward example of this technique, the poet transforms the waṣf in order to say something specific about the nature of the creature. In this essay, I will begin by connecting Behemoth’s body description to the waṣf, drawing on Jacqueline Vayntrub’s work (2020a) to show how ancient authors could playfully rework this technique to emphasize certain aspects of their subject’s body and character. Returning to Job 40.15–18, I will argue that these verses should be understood as a transformed waṣf, with implications for understanding Behemoth as well as the function of the body description in Job 40 as a whole.

The Poetics of the Body in the Hebrew Bible

A number of texts from the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern literature use head-to-toe description to characterize and define the human body. This poetic strategy is commonly described in the secondary literature as the waṣf, which takes its name from a genre of Arabic love poetry that similarly provides a thick description of the body. ⁷ In a waṣf, body parts are listed and described according to an organizing principle that develops its contents from head to toe. In ancient Near Eastern literature, a genre of texts known as the Göttertypentexte describes divine cult statues following this principle. ⁸ In fact, various Sumerian and Akkadian literary genres favor head-to-toe organization for systematic descriptions of the body, both divine and human. ⁹ The best-known examples from biblical literature occur in the Song of Songs, whereas other lists of body parts can be found in the books of Psalms, Proverbs, Daniel, Isaiah, and Ezekiel. ¹⁰ Thus Song 5 describes the male lover’s body, starting with his head and its various features:

His head is like the most-pure gold.

His hair is curly-black like a raven.

His eyes are like doves by streams of water,

washed in milk, mounted like jewels.

His cheeks are like garden beds full of balsam trees yielding perfume.

His lips are like lilies dripping with drops of myrrh.

His arms are like rods of gold set with chrysolite.

His abdomen is like polished ivory inlaid with sapphires.

His legs are like pillars of marble set on bases of pure gold (vv. 11–14).

All of these body parts are couched using metaphors that make use of stone and metal imagery reminiscent of a description of a statue, akin to the Göttertypentexte that describe divine cult statues in the ancient Near East. Indeed, it has been suggested that the biblical awāṣf may have developed from these earlier descriptions of divine statuary (Watson, 2005: 353–356).

This downward movement is not always truly linear. The poet might also choose to highlight a particular aspect of the body by presenting it out of sequence, for example, in Song 5, where the poet interrupts his downward movement with an out-of-place body part, namely the lover’s mouth. This rhetorical strategy allows the poet to connect the lover and his body to conceptions of sweetness, taste, and the desires of the appetite: the lover’s mouth is described as mamtaqqîm, with the plural form of the noun meteq, “sweetness,” functioning as a predicate nominative relative to the singular subjective nominative (“his mouth”) and thus as a plural of intensity: “his mouth is very sweet.” By highlighting aspects of taste and sweetness through the focus on the lover’s mouth, the poet can conclude of the lover’s body as a whole that “he is totally desirable.” Indeed, a concluding statement summing up the total physical perfection of the described body is typical of the biblical awāṣf, and similarly following the description of the Beloved’s body, Song 4 declares: “all of you is beautiful.” A waṣf thus provides a detailed account of the subject’s body to manifest its aesthetic value and, as Jacqueline Vayntrub has argued (2020b: 222–225), by extending its account systematically from head to toe, therefore makes a claim at totality. It is consequently a particularly effective technique for persuading the reader of the beauty and complete perfection of the subject.

A similar strategy in which the order and focus of the body description has a rhetorical function can be found in the description of the Capable Wife in Proverbs 31. In fact, this poem has also been interpreted as waṣf by David Bernat (2004: 341–347), but he thinks that this is a particular sort of waṣf that he calls the “anti-waṣf,” the use of the waṣf to polemicize against beauty rather than to praise it: thus the poem concludes that “charm is deceitful, and beauty is fleeting.” While it is certainly the case therefore that this poem develops a critique of beauty, it is extremely difficult to agree that it does so by making use of the conventional structure of the waṣf. When compared with other examples of the waṣf, the poem describing the Capable Wife is strangely truncated:

Who can find a Capable Wife?

For her value is far more than rubies […]

She obtains wool and flax,

and she is pleased to work with her palms.

She is like the merchant ships;

she brings her food from afar.

She also gets up while it is still night,

and provides food for her household and a portion to her female servants.

She considers a field and buys it;

with the fruit of her palms she plants a vineyard.

She begins her work vigorously,

and she strengthens her arms.

She knows that her merchandise is good,

and her lamp does not go out in the night.

Her hands take hold of the distaff,

and her palms grasp the spindle.

She extends her palm to the poor,

and reaches out her hand to the needy.

She is not afraid of the snow for her household,

for all of her household are clothed with scarlet […].

Charm is deceitful and beauty is fleeting,

but a woman who fears the LORD will be praised.

Give her from the fruit of her hands,

and let her works praise her in the city gates (vv. 10–31).

Rather than providing a list of the parts of the woman’s body moving from head to toe, the poem instead focuses only upon certain body parts, explicitly resisting a top-to-toe description: the poem highlights the woman’s hands, arms, and palms.

This has led Jacqueline Vayntrub (2020a) to observe that rather than focusing on the passive beauty of the Capable Wife as would a waṣf, the poem instead highlights her actions through the focus on her hands. Vayntrub therefore interprets Proverbs 31 as a play on the very rhetorical device that demonstrates beauty, the waṣf, to develop a critique of innate beauty in favor of active deeds. The waṣf is transformed from a visually driven, physically framed, and top-to-toe representation to a more dynamic representation that narrows the physical field to the hands and arms. In so doing, Proverbs 31 shifts the poetic technique of the waṣf from representations of passivity (of being viewed) to those of activity (of giving, putting, making, and, ultimately, reward receiving). This shift can thus be understood as a literary strategy we might call a transformed waṣf, focusing only upon certain aspects of the body to highlight the various associations and activities that accompany them and so in this case, demonstrating the woman’s skill and agency. Thus the poem can conclude: “charm is deceitful, and beauty is fleeting.” Vayntrub (2020a: 51) therefore argues that “[t]he poem upends the expectations of descriptive poems in order to advance an argument against passive, inborn beauty.” Wisdom, acquired and demonstrated through correct action is preferable to beauty, as beauty is an innate quality that requires no skill or agency to achieve – and this makes perfect sense in the context of the book of Proverbs, which is a book about the acquisition of wisdom, after all.

The Poetics of the Body in Job 40

If we return to the description of Behemoth in Job 40, at first glance, this too seems to develop a systematic description of the creature, listing and describing various aspects of a body and using parallelism as well as simile and metaphor, just like the other examples of the biblical awāṣf known from the Song of Songs – and, in fact, this text has been explicitly interpreted as a waṣf by Bernat (2004: 334–346). ¹¹ But like the description of the Capable Wife, rather than providing a systematic and head-to-toe description of the creature’s body, the body description here is similarly truncated – the poet seems to circle around and so highlight the middle regions of Behemoth’s body. In fact, we can translate and interpret all these bodily references as relating to one body part in particular:

Look now at Behemoth,

which I made as I made you:

he eats grass like the ox.

Look at his strength in his balls,

and his power in the muscles of his penis.

He makes his penis stiff like a cedar,

the sinews of his balls are tightly wound.

His balls are tubes of bronze,

His balls like bars of iron (vv. 15–18).

Thus in v. 16, we learn that the “strength” of the beast is in its “loins.” Here the noun motnayim refers to the “loins,” the part of the body between the ribs and hip bones. It can therefore be used euphemistically to refer to the region of the sexual organs. ¹² Roland Boer (2011: 43) suggests that, since motnayim is a dual form, it specifically refers to the testicles. ¹³ The next body part referred to is the creature’s beṭen, usually translated as “belly.” However, this too can have connotations of the genitalia, as the most common use of the term is as a reference to the reproductive organs and hence it is often translated as “womb” when describing a female referent. ¹⁴ In fact, in the Assur Medical Catalogue, urinary and kidney complaints are conflated. Strahil Panayotov (2018) therefore argues that this convergence suggests “a multi-layered approach to kidneys [and innards] which includes the penis and testicles.” The penis and testes are therefore conflated with the guts and innards in ancient Near Eastern texts. ¹⁵ This euphemistic interpretation of motnayim and beṭen in v. 16 is strengthened through the description of beṭen by the noun ˀôn, “strength,” which is used in a number of places in biblical literature to refer to the strength to procreate. ¹⁶ Specifically, the colon declares that the šārîr of the creature will be strengthened. This term is a hapax but is usually interpreted as referring to the creature’s “sinew” or “muscle” (BDB 1057a). The term is likely related to the bi-consonantal noun šōr, which occurs with the meaning “navel, umbilical cord” in several texts. ¹⁷ This seems to be the interpretation of the LXX, which translates this verse as “its strength is in the navel (omphalos) of its belly.” This is particularly intriguing in light of the phallic implications drawn here. The hapax šōrer in Song 7.3 is often related to the term šōr; alternatively, Marvin Pope (1977: 617) has connected the term to an Arabic lexeme meaning “secret place, pudenda, fornication,” suggesting that the woman’s vulva is in sight. By describing her vulva as a body that never lacks wine, the speaker evokes the Beloved’s sexual fluids or his own semen. However, even if we take šōrer as “navel,” it could be suggested that this term is functioning in Song 7.3 as a synecdoche of the woman’s lower region as a whole, and, hence, euphemistically to her genitalia. The navel is therefore another body part that can be used to refer to the genitals. ¹⁸

Verse 17 goes on to describe how the beast “makes its tail stiff like a cedar.” The term zānāb occurs with the meaning “tail” in a number of biblical texts. ¹⁹ Yet the phallic connotations are again obvious through its description, where the hapax verbal form yaḥpōṣ likely means “to make stiff” in light of the Arabic cognate ḥaṣīf (Bernat, 2004: 336). This is supported by the Greek translation, which provides the verb histēmi, “to erect.” This stiffened “tail” therefore presents a serious problem to the view that the animal is a hippopotamus, and even Robert Alter (2010: 170 n. 1), who favors this interpretation, suggests that “the exiguous tail of the hippopotamus scarcely fits the bill… in all likelihood, ‘tail’ is a euphemism for a different part of the male animal’s anatomy.” ²⁰ In fact, Bernat (2004: 336) suggests a possible double entendre here for ḥāpāṣ with the verb ḥāpēṣ, “to delight, desire.” This verb is frequently found with a sexual connotation. ²¹ It is therefore likely Behemoth’s penis that stiffens here. ²² Similarly, the next body part described, the creature’s paḥad, can be interpreted as a reference to its testes. This hapax is usually construed as referring to the thighs, again based on an Arabic cognate. ²³ But in the Vulgate, this is taken to refer to the creature’s testicles, ²⁴ and this is also the case in the Aramaic Targum to Job. Consequently, a number of commentators interpret this term as “testes” (Greenstein, 2020: 178; Alter 2019: 169–170). In fact, the more common term for “thigh” in Biblical Hebrew, yārēk, can be employed with the meaning of genitalia for both men and women. ²⁵ Thus even if we interpret paḥad here as an alternative term for the thighs, this may still function as a euphemism for the creature’s genitalia, perhaps specifically his testes if we are to take seriously some of the manuscript traditions that render the term in the dual form. ²⁶

In v. 18, we learn that the creature’s ˁeṣem are like “tubes of bronze.” ²⁷ The term ˁeṣem usually means “bone.” The colon would therefore seem to describe the creature’s skeletal strength. But the “tubes of bronze” have obvious monumental and phallic implications. In fact, as Ingrid Lilly (2019) has recently demonstrated, in biblical literature “bones” in male bodies are frequently figured and configured in discourses about reproduction and kinship. In particular, while dry, shattered, or rotten bones are indicative of poor health and even impotence, “wet bones” index a male body’s vitality and procreative power. Bones are therefore a substance of kinship, expanding our understanding of the semantic range and rhetorical use of ˁeṣem to suggest an analogy between bones and semen. Similarly, an Old Babylonian birth incantation claims that bone is created from “the fluids of intercourse,” referring to semen. ²⁸ The next body part found in v. 18, gerēm, is translated by the New Revised Standard Version as “limb,” but this too has the meaning “bone.” ²⁹ This is again couched in monumental and phallic terms, “like bars of iron.” ³⁰ In light of Lilly’s sophisticated analysis of the semantics of bones in the Hebrew Bible, we might therefore take both of these terms to once again refer euphemistically to the creature’s genitalia. ³¹

Some of the phallic connotations which I have drawn for these verses have been acknowledged by previous scholars. ³² But understanding this pericope as a transformed waṣf demonstrates that the poem as a whole is centered both structurally and thematically upon Behemoth’s penis. Indeed, the reference to a “sword” in v. 19 may also be taken as having phallic connotations. ³³ Job 40.15-18 therefore draws upon and subverts the “poetics of the body” in order to highlight and emphasize the creature’s genitalia. The result is a claim that Behemoth has an outsize member.

The Rhetoric of the Penis in the Hebrew Bible

To unpack the implications of this claim, it is worth briefly considering the cultural discourses around penis size in the ancient Near East. This is particularly important because we should not assume that the various connotations of penis size are static across cultures and times. In particular, it is often noted that in ancient Greece, small penises were more culturally valued than large penises: across ancient Greek art and literature, large penises are associated with foolish and lustful men, whereas small penises were idealized as an attribute of the true intellectual (Dover, 1989: 126–128). To quote Aristophanes, “If you do these things I tell you, and bend your efforts to them, you will always have a shining breast, a bright skin, big shoulders, a minute tongue, a big rump and a small prick. But if you follow the practices of the youth of today, for a start you’ll have a pale skin, small shoulders, a skinny chest, a big tongue, a small rump, a big ham and a long-winded decree.” ³⁴

Nude human figures are among the earliest images that appear in ancient Near Eastern art. Initially female figures predominate, but by 6000 BCE, male figures begin to appear, and from the fourth millennium onward, we see depictions of copulating couples (Bahrani, 1993). And where the male member is visible, these do show a clear preference for large genitalia (see e.g., Assante, 2007: 375, 393, 395). This is backed up by the textual evidence, whereby the Mesopotamian gods frequently display their fecundity through references to their large penis size. Enki in particular is noteworthy for this: in the Sumerian hymn “Enki and the World Order,” his ejaculate is such that it could fill the entire Euphrates (Black et al., 2006: 220–221). Similarly, the Ugaritic deity El has a penis “as long as the sea” (Wyatt, 2006: 330). El has significant associations with fertility, both as the father of the gods and as the Ugaritic god who is most obviously concerned with human fertility (Hackett, 1989: 74). Thus, large penis size was equated with fertility, and Mesopotamian potency incantations therefore promote an outsize member as a blessing: “May your penis become as long as a mašgašu-weapon!” (Biggs, 1967: 33). Conversely, in Sumerian disputation literature, the accusation of possessing a small and flaccid penis or drooping testes is used as an insult (Matuszak, 2019: 22).

T.M. Lemos (2011) has considered the cultural discourses around penis size in biblical literature in the context of her study of the marriage metaphor in the book of Ezekiel. In these texts, Judah is personified as a female figure married to the Israelite deity. Nevertheless, she lusts after the Egyptians and seeks to make them her lovers. In Ezek. 16.26, we learn:

You engaged in illicit sex with the Egyptians—your neighbors, large of flesh—multiplying your promiscuity and provoking me to anger.

The noun bāśār, “flesh,” is employed as a reference to the male member in a number of places in the Hebrew Bible. ³⁵ In this verse, the illicit sexual activity of the woman with the Egyptian men is described via the verb zānāh, “to engage in sexual relations outside or apart from marriage” (Erlandsson, 1981: 100). Due to the sexual nature of this verse, “large flesh” here must therefore be a reference to large genitalia.

Indeed, in Ezek. 23.20, we learn that it is their large genitalia that is the source of Jerusalem’s sexual desire for the Egyptian men:

She lusted after their genitals, whose flesh was as large as those of donkeys, and their emission was as strong as that of stallions.

The Hebrew reads: “She lusted after their (m.pl.) pilagšēhem, concubines.” The pronoun is masculine plural, suggesting that this refers to concubines belonging to the Egyptian men. Yet the context precludes this interpretation, as the issue is the sexual activities of personified Jerusalem with the Egyptians themselves. Consequently, the New Revised Standard Version interprets the term in the idiomatic sense of “paramour,” but this still fails to explain how the pronoun relates to the noun. Instead, the New English Translation interprets pilegeš here as an idiomatic reference to the genitalia of the Egyptians, with the relative pronoun that follows introducing a more specific description of this: “she lusted after their genitals, whose flesh was as large as donkeys.” As we have seen, “flesh” is used elsewhere in Ezekiel 16 to describe male genitalia and in the same context. This interpretation is strengthened by the next clause, which provides an equivalent idea: “their emission was as strong as that of stallions.” Here the noun zirmāh is usually interpreted as referring to the Egyptians’ “issue,” in other words, their seminal fluid. ³⁶ Thus the seminal emission of the Egyptian men is compared to that of male horses, reminiscent of the fecundity of Enki, which was displayed through his ability to fill the Euphrates with his ejaculate. An alternative interpretation posits a metathesis of resh and mem, providing the reading zĕmôrāh, “branch” or “twig,” and so as another euphemism for the penis (Lemos, 2011: 378 n. 2). ³⁷ But either way, the implication is similar: the genitalia of these Egyptian men is either large in size or impressive in potency. In both Ezekiel 16 and 23, Lemos therefore argues that large genitalia is a particularly desirable attribute in a lover and the source of Jerusalem’s lust for the men of Egypt.

Lemos develops this interpretation with reference to 1 Kgs 12.10. This text is difficult to interpret: in response to a request that he lighten the burden placed upon the Israelites by his father, Rehoboam responds in the negative, saying, “my little one is thicker than my father’s loins.” The referent of “my little one” is not clear. The traditional view is that it refers to his little finger, ³⁸ but it is surprising that this is then compared with his father’s loins, which as we have seen, can be used to refer to genitalia. Instead, Lemos (2011: 382) concludes that the sense of this statement is a claim that Rehoboam has a larger penis than his father does – and therefore will place a larger burden upon his subjects. ³⁹ Here penis size is tied up with ideas of masculinity, authority, and power. Accordingly, a cultural preference for large penis size was operative in the world that shaped the Hebrew Bible.

Divine Willy Waving in Job 40

Thus far, I have argued that the transformed waṣf in Job 40.15–18 functions to highlight and so to emphasize the genitalia of Behemoth. Focus on the implications of this description in terms of revealing the nature of the beast as either mythopoeic or mundane rather misses the point: instead, this text is making a claim that the creature has an outsize member. And this is crucial for understanding the function of the body description: because God is ultimately able to defeat the beast, the text therefore claims that Yahweh, so to speak, has the bigger balls. We might understand the battle between God and Behemoth as a divine willy-waving contest. ⁴⁰

This interpretation might at first seem surprising to those brought up in a Western tradition that emphasizes God’s transcendence and incorporeality. Yet as critical readers of the Hebrew Bible are well aware, references to God’s body are found throughout biblical literature. ⁴¹ The God of the Hebrew Bible has a body with hands, fingers, arms, and feet. ⁴² His body therefore requires regulation through dress, diet, and rest. ⁴³ He has a face with eyes, ears, lips, and a nose. ⁴⁴ Consequently, this God is one who can touch, see, taste, smell, and hear. ⁴⁵ And one implication of God’s embodiment is his related sexuality.

Crucial here is the distinction between biological sex and gender. The Hebrew Bible assumes two biological sexes, in binary terms: male and female. ⁴⁶ In contrast to biological sex, gender is a social construct referring to masculinity and femininity as roles an individual can perform (Williams, 2010: 4). ⁴⁷ And because this is socially constructed, there are culturally specific ideas and ideals about the ways in which these roles may be articulated – for example, as I have argued in this essay, in the biblical world, large penis size had associations with ideal masculinity. Other traits of ideal masculinity in the Hebrew Bible include military might, beauty or bodily integrity, honor, provisioning, and virility (Haddox, 2016). The God of the Hebrew Bible has a body and therefore a biological sex: he is consistently described by masculine pronouns and by male roles such as “king,” “father,” or “bridegroom.” ⁴⁸ In Exod. 15.3, it is declared that “the Lord is a man.” ⁴⁹ On the other hand, to be sure there are also places in the Hebrew Bible where God is described in more feminine terms, for example, as one who has given birth, either to the collective Israel or an individual figure. ⁵⁰ Thus God’s sex is male, but in certain biblical texts, we might claim that his gender presentation is more feminine. ⁵¹ Nevertheless, these instances are rare, and it is much more typically the case that the God of the Hebrew Bible conforms to masculine gendered behaviors, to include shows of military might, beauty, honor, provisioning for his people, and virility. ⁵²

This relates to a strong concern for the maintenance of gender boundaries found throughout the Hebrew Bible, as demonstrated by the prohibition against cross-dressing in Deut. 22.5. ⁵³ As a number of scholars have recognized, for a male to engage in behaviors more usually gendered as “feminine,” or vice versa, for a woman to perform more “masculine” gendered roles, is one way in which the biblical authors could polemicize against certain characters. ⁵⁴ Thus although it is important to recognize that sex and gender are not interchangeable concepts, it is nevertheless the case that biblical literature equates the two, with expectations that ideal males are masculine and females, feminine. And as a male deity, the God of the Hebrew Bible is also typically gendered as masculine. In this context, it is unsurprising that we might expect this God to possess an outsize member. ⁵⁵ Indeed, one possible interpretation of Isa. 6.1 is that the prophet envisions God’s penis filling the whole temple (Eslinger, 1995). ⁵⁶ This is similar to Ezek. 1.27 and 8.2, which describes God’s motnayim, his “loins,” glowing golden and giving off a brilliant light like fire. As we have seen, the loins are commonly used to euphemistically refer to the male member, and it has been suggested that the description here refers to the deity’s genitalia (Boer, 2011: 44; Hooker, 2014: 27). Indeed, the form beheld in Ezek. 8.2 is specifically said to have the appearance of a man. The golden ⁵⁷ color of God’s genitalia here recalls the gold of a divine cult statue, and the fact that the brilliant light this metal gives off is equated to fire suggests the organ is immense in size. Both Ezekiel and Isaiah therefore envision an embodied God within the temple – including his outsize member. ⁵⁸ And all this is crucial for understanding the body description in Job 40 as a text about divine willy waving: in light of the implications we have drawn concerning penis size in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near East, the consequence of all this is a claim to masculine power, sexual potency, and authority. Thus while Behemoth may have big balls, Yahweh’s are bigger. ⁵⁹

In this context, it is significant that God asks: “Can anyone catch it by its eyes, or pierce its nose with a snare?” (v. 24). The answer to this rhetorical question is no man, but God alone. The creature is tamed via a nose piercing. In the wider context of the Hebrew Bible, nose piercing is frequently used in conjugal contexts, worn by women as a marker of betrothal (Quick, 2021: 135–138). In addition to domesticating Behemoth, this also functions to feminize the beast. Despite the masculine potency indicated by his penis size, Behemoth is ultimately feminized via his interaction with Yahweh, the most masculine of deities.

Conclusions

In this paper, I have argued that the poetic description of Behemoth in Job 40.15–18 makes use of a literary technique for describing the body known as the waṣf, elsewhere found most famously in biblical literature in the descriptions of the lovers in the Song of Songs. However, instead of providing a standard systematic itemization of this monstrous body, the book of Job subverts the waṣf form. The description of Behemoth’s body is truncated, making use of highly euphemistic language that focuses the reader upon one body part in particular, namely Behemoth’s penis. Through the transformation of the waṣf, the poet highlights and emphasizes the massive genitalia of the monster. And because God is ultimately able to defeat the beast, the text therefore claims that Yahweh has the superior genitalia, with implications for his masculine authority and power. Thus, by exploring the ideas and values embedded within the literary and poetic devices employed in the description of Behemoth’s body, new implications for understanding the battle between Yahweh and the beast can be brought to the fore: hidden within the language of this text is a divine willy-waving contest. Despite Behemoth’s outsize member and correlated claims to machismo, the creature is ultimately no match for the masculinity of God.