Read The Good and Evil Serpent Online
Authors: James H. Charlesworth
The Good and Evil Serpent (111 page)
The literal meanings of both Hebrew expressions just cited are “crawling things of the earth” and “crawling things of the dust.” According to Micah, the nations that have persecuted Israel will “lick the dust like a serpent [
]” and they will “crawl from their holes like snakes of the dust” (7:17). Compare the rendering of the LXX: “[A]s serpents crawling [on the] earth” (coq ocpeiq oxipovteq yffv). Since in antiquity a worm (in Hebrew
)
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and a snake were classed together as a crawling thing, it is conceivable that “crawling things” sometimes meant a “worm.”
99
According to the author of Deuteronomy 32:24, God will send against the idolaters “the poison of snakes [or crawling things] of the dust.”
The phrase
in 1 Kings 1:9 seems to denote a place near En Rogel at the southern end of the Hinnom Valley where it joins the Kidron Valley. It was called “the Stone of the Crawling Thing (or Snake),” “the Stone of Zoheleth,” “the Gliding Stone,” or simply “the Serpent’s Stone.”
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It is clear that by the third century
BCE
was a recognized, perhaps well-known, place, since a translator of the Septuagint simply transliterated the Hebrew of 1 Kings 1:9 (“near the stone of Zoheleth”): Jtapa tov)d6ov tov Zcoe)ie6e
L
Most likely the “Zoheleth” on which Adonijah offered sacrifices was an altar associated with ophiolatry and perhaps it bore serpent iconography. Recall 1 Kings 1:9: “And Adonijah sacrificed sheep and oxen and fattened cattle upon (or by) the stone of Zoheleth, which is by En rogel.”
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Altars with horns have been found in many excavated sites in ancient Palestine, and an altar with an inscribed serpent was found at Beer-Sheba.
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Most likely “the stone of Zoheleth” denoted (perhaps for the Canaanites) “the serpent’s stone;” but, for Israel, these serpents were “snakes of the dust.”
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4. | “Leviathan” 104 | Isa 27:1 | N 105 |
| | | Job 3:8; 40:25; 41:1 | N |
| | | Ps 74:14 | B? |
Leviathan, mentioned five times in the Hebrew Bible,
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is the name of a mythical and legendary serpent that lives in the sea and is primordial (note the German: “Meeresurdrache”).
107
Most likely, the name “Leviathan” was inherited by the He-brews and Israelites from south Canaanite myths and traditions.
108
Ancient translators of the Hebrew Bible usually transliterated
, as in the Peshitta (
[Isa 27:1,
bis])
. In the Septuagint, the Greek translators choose not only “dragon” (tòv SpaKovta [Isa 27:1
(bis)]
and similarly in Psalm 74:14 and Job 40:20 LXX) but also “great sea-monster” (
[Job 3:8]). The fullest description of Leviathan in the Hebrew Bible appears in Job 40:25–41:26(41:1–34). According to Isaiah 27:1, a section of the so-called Isaiah Apocalypse, Leviathan is a large, terrifying dragon that is a “fleeing serpent” and a “twisted serpent”;
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it will be punished by the Lord when the beast exits his place.
110
According to some ancient texts and iconographical items, this serpentine monster has seven heads
(OdesSol
22:5),
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an indeterminable number of many heads
in Ps 74:14), or only one head (
in Job 40:31[41:7]).
112
Some positive symbolic meaning is also found in the noun.
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After the Lord punishes Leviathan, he will become food for God’s people in the future, latter days, or End-time (Ps 74:14). Thus, while
was a symbol of evil for the Israelites and other Near Eastern cultures,
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in one sense, Leviathan will have a positive meaning for God’s people in the future. This positive meaning—the body of Leviathan will supply the meat course for the eschatological banquet—is usually paramount when Leviathan is mentioned in early Jewish texts, like
1 Enoch
60:7,
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4 Ezra
6:50–52, and
2 Baruch
29:1–8.
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The much later (probably post-seventh-century)
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan
renders Gen 1:21 as follows: “God created the great sea monsters,
Leviathan and his mate
[n’JU ““21]T
P
V?],
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that are designated for the day of consolation
[KnOTO Dl’?].”
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According to the compilers of
Perek Shirah
, circa tenth century
CE
(but with older traditions),
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Leviathan is depicted as saying: “Give thanks to God for God is good, for God’s kindness endures forever” (Ps 136:1).
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Likewise, if the Lord made Leviathan to play in the sea (Ps 104:2426), he cannot be simply a negative symbol. “Leviathan” may have a neutral, ambiguous, or both positive and negative symbolic meaning in such passages.