Let's Be Perfectly Honest: What Type of Animal Would Best Fit the One Mentioned in Job 40:15-24 KJV?

[Phanta]

[ladsin]

Woow!!! Triple Fuck me. I literally just wrote a 2000+ treatise to answer your question when I got kicked from GaG and nome of it was saved. So unfortunately you’ll be stuck with the truncated version.

It’s a hippo which is why several translations including but not limited to the OJB (orthodox Jewish Bible), NLT (New Living Translation) and many others which I listed on my last try directly translate it as Hippo, or add an addendum saying it’s a hippo.

Now the word itself בהמות‎ or bəhēmōt is actually the plural of בהמה‎ or bəhēmāh which literally means “beast”. Given the context though it appears to be a case of “pluralis maiestaticus“ or An augmentive plural which is meant to denote the majesty or grandeur of the thing being referenced. This is why many translations leave it as “Great Beast.” The Hebrew בהמה appears to be a loan word from the Ancient Egyptian, “pꜣ-jḥ-mw” (not all letter carried over due to not existing in English). This Egyptian word literally translated means “Ox of the water” which obviously is a reference to the Hippo.

Besides that the description of the beast from this passage in Job appears to line up with the hippo, “it feeds on grass” “lies among the Lotuses” and is hidden by “the reeds and lotuses.” The only description which does not readily appear to describe the hippo is “its tail sways like a cedar.” However, the word translated sway here “חפץ châphêts” can be translated as “to make firm” like a cedar as espoused by Aben Ezra and would thus be a reference to a hippos male member becoming sturdy, perhaps a reference to Baculum (penis bone) especially when taken in context “the sinews of its thighs are close-knit” which would them be a reference to hippos having concealed testes.

[ladsin]

Thank god it actually went through this time. I had a bear delete scare again

[CountessSarah]

I do find this rather interesting.

Honestly, I think this might just a mythical beast that doesn't/never existed at all.
But I have seen a hippopotamus suggested before, which... kind of makes sense.

The cedar line is so vague and hard to understand I don't really know what to even imagine. It doesn't tell us anything about the size, just a weird analogy for its movement.

[ladsin]

Read my explanation which goes into that bit about the cedar at the end

[Hurdleez-Swampede]

Hippopotamus likely and not a dinosaur or dragon.

[ROCKS128]

Vegetarian dragon?

[Deathraider]

Jabba the Hutt.

[ladsin]

Nah fam