Job 40:15 - Exposition

Behold now behemoth . "Behemoth" is ordinarily the plural of behemah "a beast;" but it is scarcely possible to understand the word in this sense in the present passage, where it seems to be a noun singular, being followed by singular verbs, and represented by singular pronouns. Hence modern critics almost unanimously regard the word here as designating "some particular animal." The mammoth, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and the elephant have been suggested. Of these the mammoth is precluded by the want of any evidence that it existed in Job's day, and the rhinoceros by the absence of any allusion to its peculiar feature. Authorities are divided almost equally between the elephant and the hippopotamus; but the best recent Hebraists and naturalists incline rather to the latter . Which I made with thee ; i.e. "which I created at the same time as I created thee". He eateth grass as an ox ; i.e. he is graminivorous, not carnivorous. This is admitted to be true of the hippopotamus, which lives in the Nile during the day, and at night emerges from the river, and devastates the crops of sugar-cane, rice, and millet.