Is Isaiah dreaming about the slain sea dragons during the battles of the end of time?
Or does he retrieve ancient mysteries that echo the origin of humanity and the creation of culture itself? Seems like both.
Chapter 27, still in line with Isaiah’s visions of the end of time, opens with a supersize serpentine mythological battle scene:
בַּיּ֣וֹם הַה֡וּא יִפְקֹ֣ד יְהֹוָה֩ בְּחַרְבּ֨וֹ הַקָּשָׁ֜ה וְהַגְּדוֹלָ֣ה וְהַחֲזָקָ֗ה עַ֤ל לִוְיָתָן֙ נָחָ֣שׁ בָּרִ֔חַ וְעַל֙ לִוְיָתָ֔ן נָחָ֖שׁ עֲקַלָּת֑וֹן וְהָרַ֥ג אֶת־הַתַּנִּ֖ין אֲשֶׁ֥ר בַּיָּֽם׃
On that day YHWH will punish
With a great, cruel, mighty sword
Leviathan the Elusive Serpent—
Leviathan the Twisting Serpent;
The Dragon of the sea will be slain.
Isaiah 27:1
Who is the elusive serpent - sea dragon - named Leviathan whose death by God’s sword will mark the end of history and the beginning of the new era of messianic reign?
Isaiah may be imagining the future - but he’s actually quoting, verbatim, a tale from the past.
This verse is identical to the myth of Ba‘al known from the city of Ugarit, whose literature was composed about the 14th century BCE. This particular fragment is about the creation of the world, as the Creator - Ba’al - supreme lord of the pantheon, defeats the great sea monsters that preceded his takeover, and at least in one later version is also his mother:
“You Ba‘al smite Lotan, the serpent, destroy the twisting serpent, the close-coiled one of the seven heads.”
Is Lotan the same as the Leviathan? Most scholars claim so. The similarities between the two texts are hard to ignore. It is also hard to ignore the reference to the first verses of Genesis - where YHWH creates the world and yet there is mention of Tehom - the deep that already exists beforehand. Most opinions link this Tehom to Tiamat - the ancient Semitic primordial goddess depicted as sea monster, the mother of the gods, who is slain to enable the takeover of the masculine deity. Patriarchy’s rise is hinted here, ancient and violent. The serpent will not really die - appearing again in Eden, and as the totem of healing still seen in the Jerusalem temple in Isaiah’s days.
Did Isaiah know the Ugarithic sacred stories as they came down to him in Jerusalem, almost a millennium later, renamed, reshaped. Or was it he who chose to twist the legend dreamed by previous generations long ago of the battle for creation into a warning of destruction, replacing the names of deities and monsters with those familiar to his audience?
If so - his purpose may have been to present YHWH, not Baal as the superpower of the world, destroying the forces of nature, and their pagan practices - Leviathan instead of Lotan, establishing the rule of culture and reason, bringing about a brand new world.
But either way it is the story of culture in battle with nature, the primordial life force, often feminine, vanquished by reason and masculine rule. The leviathan Isaiah dreams will also haunt the books of Psalms and Job, one day to be the messianic marker of the better days when no more depths are left to deplete.
Later generations of storytellers and mystics would interpret this vision not as ancient myth but as the metaphor of cosmic battles - dragons represent Assyria and Babylon, defeated by the force of God that will defeat, eventually, all nations.
Somehow, that day in which the serpents will be silenced, will launch the new era and the day on which the exiles will come back home, from all the four corners of the world, returning to the one true source, says Isaiah as he completes this chapter - longing for some peace and some completion. He is likely alluding here to the ten tribes of Israel - already exiled in his lifetime, vanquished by Assyria to the four corners of the empire. At first there was still hope that they will once again be back:
“And on that day, a great ram’s horn shall be sounded; and those who are lost in the land of Assyria and the exiles who are in the land of Egypt shall come and worship YHWH on the holy mount, in Jerusalem.”
But even when those days of peace will come — under the corner stone of the temple, on the top of Temple Mount, beneath the rock that lies beneath the dome is the portal into the primordial water and there the leviathan still swims, and waits.
Still there. waiting.
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