Leviathan, Chaos, and the God Who Walks on Water
From Ugaritic myth to Gospel miracles, the Bible reframes chaos under the feet of God
Leviathan and the Lord of the Sea
When we hear the name Leviathan, most of us picture a sea monster, something like a dragon or giant serpent. That’s not far from the truth. The Hebrew word liwyātān shows up only a handful of times in the Bible, but it carries with it a long history of ancient myth, fear of the sea, and hope in the God who conquers chaos.
Sea Monsters and the Edge of the World
For the ancient world, the sea wasn’t a vacation backdrop. It was the edge of existence, the place where order ended and chaos began. Storms appeared without warning, swallowing ships whole. Depths seemed bottomless. Strange creatures occasionally surfaced, confirming suspicions that monsters lurked below.
For Israel and their neighbors, the sea was the perfect symbol for everything that opposed God’s good design for the world. And Leviathan was its face.
The Monster from the Deep
The earliest version of Leviathan doesn’t appear in the Bible, but in the texts of Israel’s Canaanite neighbors at Ugarit. There, Lotan (the Ugaritic form of Leviathan) is described as a terrifying, many-headed serpent. One text records the victory chant of Baal, the storm-god, after defeating him:
Though you smote Litan the wriggling serpent,
finished off the writhing serpent,
Encircler-with-seven-heads,
the skies will be hot, they will shine.
— Ugaritic Baal Cycle (KTU 1.5 i), trans. N. Wyatt
In this story, Baal’s power as king of the gods comes partly through his victory over chaos. That writhing, twisting serpent? It’s the face of disorder and destruction, subdued by divine strength.
This idea wasn’t unique to Ugarit. In Babylon, the god Marduk battled the sea-dragon Tiamat. In Egypt, the sun-god Ra fought the serpent Apophis in the underworld each night. Across the ancient Near East, cultures told stories of their gods fighting watery chaos monsters.
Note on Spelling: You may have noticed the different spellings: Lotan and Litan. They refer to the same creature. The variation comes from how scholars transliterate the original Ugaritic word (ltn), which had no vowels. Lotan emphasizes the link to the Hebrew Leviathan, while Litan stays closer to the original Ugaritic pronunciation.
What Is a Polemic?
A polemic is a forceful argument or critique, usually aimed at dismantling someone else’s beliefs. When the Hebrew Bible borrows imagery from surrounding cultures and flips it to glorify Yahweh instead of Baal or Marduk, that’s a theological polemic. What the nations told as myth, the Bible retold as revelation.
It’s like the biblical writers are saying: Nice sea monster story you’ve got there. Shame your god needed a sword and a nap afterwards. Our God just speaks—and chaos bows.
The Bible’s Polemic: Yahweh vs. Leviathan
When the Hebrew Bible speaks of Yahweh defeating Leviathan, it echoes the imagery of those myths, but with a twist. Yahweh doesn’t fight for survival. He doesn’t struggle with chaos. He simply rules over it.
“You divided the sea by your might;
you broke the heads of the sea monsters…
you crushed the heads of Leviathan.”
— Psalm 74:13–14“The LORD… will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent,
Leviathan the twisting serpent,
and He will slay the dragon that is in the sea.”
— Isaiah 27:1
It’s deliberate. The same language that once glorified Baal now magnifies the God of Israel. Chaos is real, but it’s not sovereign. Yahweh is.
Leviathan in the Bible
Leviathan appears only six times in the Old Testament, but each time punches above its weight:
Job 3:8 – A poetic curse calls on those who can “rouse Leviathan,” linking the creature to ancient magical traditions.
Job 41 – The longest and most detailed section. Leviathan is portrayed as untamable, fire-breathing, and majestic. A beast no human can conquer.
Psalm 74 – God shatters Leviathan’s heads, connecting creation and Exodus to divine victory over chaos.
Psalm 104 – Leviathan appears again, but now as a playful sea creature, God’s pet, not His rival.
Isaiah 27 – A prophetic vision where Leviathan represents cosmic and political evil that God will finally destroy.
Other Views on Leviathan
Not everyone reads Leviathan the same way. Across centuries of interpretation, readers have landed in a few very different camps, some seeing an actual creature, others a cosmic symbol. Understanding these perspectives helps us appreciate why the Bible’s portrayal is so powerful.
1. The Literalist View
Some interpreters, especially in modern creationist circles, take Leviathan as a real, physical animal.. Perhaps a massive sea reptile or a now-extinct dinosaur. Job 41, they argue, offers a zoological description of a creature that once roamed the seas. This approach treats Leviathan as evidence for the Bible’s historical reliability, showing that ancient people really did encounter such beasts.
But while this view defends the Bible’s truthfulness, it can miss the deeper point of the passage. The writer of Job paints Leviathan in vivid detail, not to satisfy curiosity, but to awaken awe. The goal isn’t simply to identify the species, but to reveal the scope of divine sovereignty. Leviathan’s terrifying power serves one purpose: to show that even chaos itself answers to God.
2. The Poetic Realist View
A more moderate reading sees Leviathan as a real creature described in heightened poetic language. Many traditional commentaries identify it with a crocodile or whale. The vivid imagery of smoke, flame, and indestructible scales, they suggest, shows the creature’s untamable strength, not literal fire-breathing, but poetic grandeur meant to humble the reader before God’s power.
This view captures the awe but often stops short of seeing Leviathan’s larger mythic role in the ancient near eastern imagination.
3. The Ancient Near Eastern Contextual View
This is where most modern biblical scholars land. They note that Leviathan mirrors the chaos monsters of neighboring cultures: Lotan in Ugaritic myth, Tiamat in Babylon, Apophis in Egypt. In this reading, Leviathan is a symbol, not a species. The Bible deliberately reuses the imagery of the nations but flips the meaning: Yahweh doesn’t fight chaos; He rules over it.
This interpretation sees the biblical text as a theological polemic, a statement about God’s supremacy, not zoology.
4. The Hybrid View
Some bridge the two, suggesting Leviathan was a known creature that became a living metaphor for chaos and evil. Like a real storm that also represents spiritual turmoil, Leviathan may have been a tangible image that grew into a cosmic symbol.
This view preserves the link between physical creation and theological truth, recognizing that biblical imagery often flows between both realms.
Where This Article Stands
The perspective you’ve read here aligns closest with the contextual and theological view. The Bible doesn’t deny that large sea creatures exist; it uses them to teach that no matter how terrifying the depths, God’s sovereignty is absolute.
The chaos may rise, but it won’t win.
Job 41: King of Beasts
This chapter is basically God giving a divine TED Talk on why Job should stop pretending he knows how the universe works. Leviathan is described in terrifying detail: breathing fire, impervious to weapons, stirring the sea like boiling water. And the whole point?
“No one is fierce enough to rouse it.
Who then is able to stand against Me?” — Job 41:10
Translation: If you can’t handle Leviathan, you definitely can’t handle Me.
Leviathan is more than a mere creature.. it embodies the terror of chaos itself. And yet, before Yahweh, it bows like everything else.
Jesus and the Sea: Yahweh in Sandals
Now. let’s consider the Gospel story of Jesus walking on water (Matt 14:22–33; Mark 6:45–52; John 6:16–21).
For modern readers, it’s a miracle. For ancient Jews, it’s a theological mic drop.
To walk on the sea was to do what only Yahweh could do. Job 9:8 says God “tramples the waves,” and Jesus casually does just that; no sword, no speech, just sandals on the surface of chaos.
And when the disciples freak out (understandable), Jesus says, “It is I,” or literally in Greek: ἐγώ εἰμι (egō eimi)—“I AM.” It’s the same divine name God gave to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14), echoing Yahweh’s self-identification as the eternal, self-existent one.
Walking on the sea declared something far greater than a miracle. It revealed divine identity in motion.
The God who crushed Leviathan is here, in the flesh.
The raging sea obeys Him. The chaos is under His feet. This is not just about God, it is God.
Why It Matters (for People Who Still Live in a Storm)
Leviathan may sound like mythology, but the meaning is brutally relevant. The sea monster was a symbol. The chaos it represents still sinks ships today, just with different names.
We live in a world of medical diagnoses, political instability, mental breakdowns, and existential dread. Leviathan has modern disguises, but the same spiritual shape: overwhelming, untamable, terrifying.
Scripture never promises the absence of chaos, only its defeat.
Jesus doesn’t just calm storms, He walks on them. He doesn’t just survive Leviathan, He reigns over it. And in the end, Revelation says:
“And the sea was no more.” — Revelation 21:1
Not because oceans are bad, but because the ancient symbol of chaos will finally be gone. Forever.
Challenge: Who’s Your Leviathan?
Everyone’s got one.
Anxiety that controls your every decision
Bitterness that poisons relationships
Injustice that feels too big to fight
Temptation you’ve convinced yourself can’t be beaten
What if Leviathan isn’t your master?
What if it’s just God’s oversized goldfish?
The biblical story is not about you slaying the beast. It’s about trusting the One who already did.
So the challenge is simple and hard:
Stop negotiating with your Leviathan. Start trusting the One who treads on the deep.
Quick Reference
Leviathan in Ugarit – Defeated by Baal as a seven-headed chaos serpent.
Biblical polemic – Yahweh, not Baal, crushes Leviathan. No contest.
Job 41 – Leviathan is terrifying, untouchable, a symbol of power under divine control.
Psalm 74 / Isaiah 27 – God’s past and future victories over chaos.
Psalm 104 – Leviathan is reduced to a playful sea creature.
Jesus on the water – A living picture of Yahweh trampling chaos.
Final hope – Chaos doesn’t get the last word. Jesus does.
Want to Go Deeper?
Ugaritic Texts – Religious Texts from Ugarit, trans. N. Wyatt (Sheffield, 2002)
Reference Work – Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, entry by C. Uehlinger (Brill/Eerdmans, 1999)
Popular Summary – Michael S. Heiser, I Dare You Not to Bore Me with the Bible, ch. “What Walking on Water Really Means”
Biblical Polemic Studies – John Day, God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea (Cambridge, 1985)
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Disclaimer: This post was sharpened with the help of AI tools for clarity and flow.
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Not fighting against, but ruling over. Not in the sea of chaos, but in the Good Land. Not engaging in battle, but standing in transcendence of victory. The temptation is to try to tame the untameable by our own machinations. Inner shift happens by the living and operative word that divides the soul from the spirit.