Today’s Scripture Reading (May 26,
2015): Job 41
Sperm Whales
were mystical animals until probably sometime early in the 18th century.
It wasn’t until then that we started to hunt them for the liquid wax that is
found in their heads called spermaceti. But, up until then, they were animals
that we only encountered when they were far off, and they were beasts that
deserved our fear. We never encountered them up close, which was just the way
that we wanted it. Even today, the High Finned Sperm Whale that is thought to
inhabit the North Atlantic remains an animal of mystery. We have heard the
rumors of its existence, we have sat down for the story telling sessions of
sailors describing this beast to us, but we have never seen it. We can’t
classify it, we don’t know what it really looks like except that it has a high
fin “like the mast on a ship.” Does it exist? Many swear that it does, but we
can’t prove it.
The Sperm
Whale is the largest toothed predator on the earth. It dwarfs the size of
almost everything else that lives. Even after we started to hunt the Sperm
Whale for it valuable spermaceti, we found out that hunting them was not a job
for the weak or the fearful. Our weapons just seemed to have too little effect
on the beasts. If the spermaceti wasn’t so valuable, we would probably have quickly
given up. In the early days, hunting them with harpoons and arrows yielded very
few kills. It took multiple hits and hits in the precisely right areas to kill
the beast. And even then, if the whaler wasn’t careful, he would lose the dying
beast in the chase that happened after the fatal blow was delivered. But what
made the Sperm Whale so dangerous was that when it was attacked, it had the
unfortunate tendency to attack back.
Like the
Behemoth, the identity of the Leviathan is unknown. But we have our theories.
Most seem to think that this animal is the crocodile, and I understand the
attraction to that idea. But I think it is a Sperm Whale. I know, a Sperm Whale
doesn’t have scales, but then at the time of Job, the Sperm Whale was a
mythical beast to which no one got ever really wanted to get close enough to
examine for scales (and neither the crocodile nor the Sperm Whale breathe fire (vs.
21), so we aren’t going to find a living example of this famed beast that
matches exactly.) Rabbi Jonathan Bar Nappaha (3rd Century) writes
this about the Leviathan –
"Once we went in a ship and
saw a fish which put his head out of the water. He had horns upon which was
written: 'I am one of the meanest creatures that inhabit the sea. I am three
hundred miles in length, and enter this day into the jaws of the Leviathan'"
One Midrashic legend tells the story of Jonah and adds a
note that on the day that the fish swallowed Jonah, the fish narrowly avoided
being made a meal of by the Leviathan, which the Rabbi insists eats one whale
each day. If it was a crocodile, it must have been a huge one.
But, whatever animal the Leviathan was, one thing is
certain. It too was a creation of God, and while our arrows and spears may have
had little effect on it, God still controlled the beast that he had created –
just as he could approach the Behemoth with his sword.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Job 42
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