Lesson 18 Behemoth

                                            Behemoth

                                                Job 40

We can learn a valuable lesson from Job’s afflictions. James, the brother of Jesus, wrote in the end of his short epistle, “You have heard of the patience of Job, and have see the end of the Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy,” or, literally, “of abounding compassion” (Jas.5:11).

“You have heard of the patience of Job,” of his bearing up under the blows of the afflictions, and of his endurance through his circumstances, proving his having become the righteousness of God through faith in the Son of God’s Covenant. Job learned of the Covenant of hope of eternal life through “The Heavenly Revelation” of the glory of the Son of the Covenant, written in the stellar heavens.

“You have seen that Jehovah is very pitiful and abounding in compassion.” We have seen how Jehovah turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends, and we have see how Jehovah blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning. (Job 42:10-17).

But have we seen the end of Jehovah? Have we seen Jehovah’s purpose to bring the righteousness Job had become through faith in the Son of the Covenant to fruition? Have we seen why Job prayed for his friends rather than contending with them concerning righteousness?

This is the lesson of Job. Job had an unseen enemy - his greatest enemy - which rendered Jehovah’s servant, Job, unfit to serve God’s purposes of the Covenant blessing for man in His Anointed Son.

In Job’s last speech, he had rebuked Bildad and had defended Jehovah in affirming the greatness of Jehovah. After mentioning different works of Jehovah, Job said, “Lo, these are parts of His ways; but how little portion is heard of Him!” (Job 26:14a).

Job had heard so little of God’s ways and he knew Jehovah so little because Job was trying to understand God’s ways and to know God through reasoning with what he had heard of Jehovah through the ears of his flesh body.

Job lamented the lost greatness of his former days and the humiliation of his present state. And then he went on to justify himself. Job knows of no sin he has committed. He desires the Almighty to give him an answer to his suffering. Jehovah has made Himself Job’s adversary, but why? Job did not know his real enemy. His own heart had deceived him and kept his sin hidden from him.

The three friends, in seeing it is useless to contend, ceased to answer Job. Then a young man, Elihu, who had been listening to the conversations, stepped forward to answer Job in God’s stead. Elihu laid God out in a way none of the others had seen Him. His long speech prepared Job for the Almighty Jehovah coming to answer Job face to face (see Job 32:1-37:24).

Jehovah’s first question to Job is, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2). Would Job have thought of himself as doing that? Not according to his speeches. With these things in mind, let us look at “the end” Jehovah purposed in putting Job to the test to prove him.

Job was a righteous man (Job 1:1, 8; 2:3). He had come to God believing that He is (Heb.11:6). He had received the righteousness of God through faith in the coming Covenant Son who had been made known to him through the gospel of the glory of God declared in the heavens, by the signs with their constellations of stars named by God Himself to tell the good news of the Covenant Son (see Job 9:6-9; 38:32-33; Ps.19:1-6; 97:6; 147:4; Is.40:25-26). Yet Job continued to live according to his own thinking concerning himself and his life upon earth while yet in his mortal body. Thinking in his heart that the issue for a son of God is one of behavior to be pleasing to God, Job set out to do the righteousness which he had become through faith in the Covenant Son. Job was very proud of his own accomplishment in his behavior towards God and man.

It was here in the thinking of his heart that Job was at enmity with God, but Job did not know he was at enmity with God in his very thinking. Job was blinded by the pride of self-will, while at the time he would have thought of pride as sin. As Job was blinded by his own heart, where he was deceived, Job was also his own enemy. Job was depriving himself of learning to live righteous through the teaching of the Spirit of God. And at enmity with God in his thinking, Job was depriving God of a servant of true righteousness. Rather than yielding the members of his body as instruments of righteousness, Job was yielding the members of his body to serve the pride of self-will. Job must be shown his own heart.

There came a day when the sons of God, the angelic creation who were God’s ministers to the heirs of salvation (Heb.1:13-14), came to present themselves before Jehovah, likely to report the affairs of the government. That day Satan came also among them. Satan is introduced into the narrative without any explanation to his person or his purpose (see Job 1:6-12).

From what we know of Satan this seems very bold, seeing that he had defected from God’s ministering angels to have his own kingdom. God had permitted the angelic cherub Lucifer to take one-third of His ministering angels in a rebellion against the authority of Almighty God. With the one-third of the angelic creation, Lucifer became Satan, the Adversary of God, and began building a world city, a system of politics, economics, and religion, east of Eden with Adam’s firstborn son, Cain, as his ally (see Is.14:12-17; Rev.12:3-4; Gen.4:16-17; 1 Jn.3:10-12).

God had a purpose in permitting the world city of mankind. The system would furnish man an alternative choice to entering the Kingdom of God through new birth. Man would have a system on earth in which he could become someone of importance rather than a mere creation of God. Satan is god of his world city and he sets the course of this world to draw men who will have their manner of life in the lusts of the flesh and of the mind and fulfilling the desires of the lusts of the flesh and of the mind (see Eph.2:1-3; 1 Jn.5:19).

That day that Satan presented himself, Jehovah would take the opportunity to teach Satan a lesson concerning true sons of God and Jehovah would expose the heart of Job to him, that Job might give up the enmity of his own thinking. Job must learn Paul’s lesson. That is, “In me (that is, in my flesh,) dwells no good thing” (Rom.7:18b).

While one is yet in the body of mortal flesh, one is yet under the law of sin and death (see Rom.8:2). The body of human flesh is a body of death and while one is yet in it, one can yet serve the sin of self-will. One can, even after having been born again, continue to have one’s own will over the will of one’s own Lord. One can yet choose to think as one pleases rather than be transformed by the renewing of the mind under the teaching of the Spirit of God (see Rom.12:1-2; Gal.5:16).

Satan must learn that once a person of mankind has united with the Anointed Covenant Son of God in His death and His burial and His resurrection, that one has made his exodus out of the creation of the flesh and he becomes a born son of God. A born son of God will not deny his God or the Anointed Son who shared righteousness and eternal life with him. He cannot deny the One who has become his life.

Satan was invited to test Job as a righteous son born of God, a true son of God. Through all the buffeting of the first fiery trials, Job took each blow without compliant or charging Jehovah. Job proved that he had a rightly directed reverence toward his God.

It was to his own pride of self-will that Job was blind. Self-will is carried out in the body of human flesh. It was given to Satan, at the last, to test Job in the flesh. This would touch the source of Job’s sin of the pride of self-will. Satan smote Job with boils over his whole body from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head (Job 2:4-7).

In this test Job had a visible evidence of the corruption of the body of sin and death. Here was a visible evidence of why God cannot use the service of the body of human flesh unless the members are yielded as instruments of righteousness. The members of the body yielded unto God as instruments of righteousness, the members become holy, set apart unto God. Serving God in the flesh in self-will is defiling to God’s work. Righteousness is carried out in the spirit of one’s being. Things done in the flesh body in the flesh are dead works. There is no life of spirit in them. God must be worshiped in the very spirit of being and in truth (Jn.4:24).

Job did not sin with his lips, but took the evil from God (Job 2:10). Then Job’s three friends came and began to probe for Job’s sin. Why was Job being punished? What sin had Job committed to suffer so? Loss after loss, why hadn’t Job confessed and repented to be forgiven?

Job remained blind to the pride of self-will. Job insisted that he was innocent of any wrong doing. He insisted that both the wicked and the righteous suffer and he is not wicked. He pleads with his friends for pity. But none is forthcoming. His friends refuse to believe that Job is innocent of deserving the punishment that he is suffering.

Job maintained his righteousness and then he began to defend himself. In chapter 29 Job speaks of the greatness of his former life when seemingly all was well with his soul and he contrasts that life with his present state. But all was not well in his former life. Job was deceiving himself as to the dead works of the flesh being “good.”

Then Job began to justify himself. In chapter 31 he boasts, though Job would not have thought it boasting. Job boasted that he has made a covenant with his eyes not to lust, and he is able to keep his own covenant. Job continued to go through the list of things for which man should be punished. But he, Job, has done that required of God. He should not be being punished. And he has not done the things for which God’s law requires punishment. He should not be suffering for wrong doing.

The truth is Job was not being punished. The test was not for punishment, but for learning. His was a chastisement for the peaceable fruit of righteousness (Heb.12:11). Job claimed himself having been at peace with his God, until the trial in his flesh disturbed his peace. The truth of the matter is, it was a false peace with Job. Job was at enmity with God in his thinking himself able to do the will of God apart from the teaching of the Holy Spirit and the strength of God working in Job to will and to do of God’s good pleasure (see Phil.2:13). Job must lay down his thinking and stop believing himself to be right. He is not right. His thinking is wrong.

The trial was a chastisement of His son by the heavenly Father. It was a training in the true righteousness of God. The righteousness which Job had become through faith in God’s Anointed Son must be the righteousness lived in the very spirit of Job’s being. The training will yield the peaceable fruit of the righteousness Christ is made unto the sons of God (see 1 Cor.1:30; 2 Cor.5:21). The fruit of God’s righteousness is love. The fruit of love is produced in the very spirit of one’s being. Love comes through having the eyes of the understanding opened to know the ways of God, His ways which motivate His works, the ways of His love.

God’s ways are shown to the sons of God by the Holy Spirit who comes to live in the son’s tent of flesh with him. God’s thoughts are not man’s thoughts and therefore man’s ways are not God’s ways. One’s ways are sourced in one’s thinking. The ways of God are deep things of God (Is.55:8- 9; 1 Cor.2:9-13).

The born son of God must be trained to receive the deep things of God in the spirit of his being. The deep things of God cannot be reasoned (1 Cor.2:9-13; see also Eph.3:8-21). They must be seen in the understanding of the spirit. The son has all of his life “in the flesh” learned through the seen and the heard, and he has lived in the “sensed” and the “felt” of the flesh. It is natural and familiar to continue to so live after one has made his exodus out of the flesh and is now in the spirit. He continues to live his new life after his new birth still in the desires of the seen and the heard and the felt of the physical realm. The son believes himself now capable of carrying out his perception of his new way of life as a son of God through making himself behave as a good son of God. He reasons that what he now sees to be right behavior will be pleasing to his heavenly Father. He sets out to perform. He has no idea that his Father’s desire is that the son learn to live the righteousness of God shared with him in the Anointed Covenant Son.

The Father has purposed that the son be led of the Spirit of God in the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, that the son might change his thinking and that the son be transformed through the new thinking received with the eyes of his understanding having been enlightened to see in the very spirit of his being.

Here are two ways of thinking, two opposing ways: the thinking of the son and the thinking of the Father. One way of thinking must be laid down.

The deep things of God are freely given to the sons of God. The deep things must be taught by One who knows them. The Holy Spirit, who is God and who therefore knows the deep things of God, is the Teacher (1 Cor.2:9-13). The righteousness of God cannot be lived out apart from love. Whatever is done apart from love is nothing (1 Cor.13:1). There is no glory to God in those things, no eternal value. Love is everlasting.

This was Job’s lesson. Job could not, in his own reasoning powers, make his own decisions concerning the will of God for Job’s doing. The Holy Spirit alone can discern the will of God for each son of God. As was said, the Holy Spirit is God. He knows the will of God. He is the One who will enlighten the eyes of the understanding in the very being of the son of God that in His light the son is given to see the will of God moment by moment. Much of God’s will is made clear in His word. As the Holy Spirit shares the word, the son learns.

One such chapter is found in the book of Job, chapter 40. Job had been complaining that if there were a way to set his case before Jehovah and Jehovah would just hear him, he could set everyone straight as to his innocence. Job has accused God of making Himself Job’s enemy. It would never have entered Job’s mind that he was the one at enmity with God in his thinking.

In chapter 38 Jehovah did come and He began to question Job’s thinking. In verse 2 of chapter 40 Jehovah asked Job, “Shall he that contends with the Almighty instruct Him? He that reproves God, let him answer it.”

Job began to see in the light of the glory of God. He would shut his mouth and listen. In verse 11 of chapter 40 Jehovah began to speak to Job of “pride,” the pride which must be abased. “Everyone who is proud must be abased. Everyone who is proud, brought low; and the wicked proud must be tread down.”

As the mortal body of each of the wicked becomes lifeless, they will all be hidden in the dust of the ground to where the body returns (see vv11-13; Gen.3:19; Job 34:15; Eccl.8:8). This is the work of Jehovah God, the Almighty God.

In verse 15 Jehovah asks Job to behold “behemoth,” which Jehovah told Job, “I made with you.” Then follows a brief description of behemoth, followed with Jehovah telling Job “behemoth is the chief of the ways of God and only He, God, can make His sword approach unto him” (v19).

Going back to chapter 26, when rebuking Bildad, Job spoke of parts of God’s ways and lamented how little portion is known of Him. Job had heard so little of God’s ways and he knows Jehovah so little, because he was trying to understand God’s ways and know Him through reasoning with what he had heard of God through the ears of his flesh body. So Job had questioned, “But the thunder of His power, who can understand?” (Job 26:14) The thunder of God’s power is understood through the Spirit of God enlightening the eyes of one’s understanding in one’s very being of spirit life.

Jehovah came personally to make Himself known to Job. He answered Job out of a whirlwind (Job 38:1). In chapter 40 Jehovah draws to His conclusion. The issue is pride, and the abasement of pride. Jehovah describes man’s choosing to have his own will as a figurative beast that He, Jehovah, must deal with.  He names the beast “behemoth,” which Jehovah relates to the “pride of man in his self-will.” The word “behemoth” is an extension of the plural behemat of the word behema. Behema can refer to a wild beast or a domesticated beast in contrast to man. The description seems to be of a very large strong land beast, but is it?

“Behemoth” has evoked considerable discussion among Bible scholars and theologians. Is behemoth a very large land beast or, as is the custom in poetry, may the word symbolize another meaning? Is this poetic language of imagery to picture a reality to the mind? Is this the beast of man in the pride of his self-will in contrast to man as a son of God designed by His Creator?

This is Job’s lesson. Will Job condemn Jehovah to justify himself? Will Job exalt his thinking above the will of God? Where is the earthly tent of man to end? Hidden in the dust of the ground. Where is the glory of man’s pride then? Who can array man with the beauty and glory of a body begotten out from the dead? Jehovah God. But only if the personal being in the earthly body of human flesh will submit to God’s way, lay down their thinking and accept God’s Gift.

Jehovah said, “I made behemoth with you” (Job 40:15). What is it Jehovah made with man? In his personal being Jehovah gave man a will and freedom of choice in using his will for his own end, or of submitting his will to the will of God that they, God and man, may be one in thought, desires, and choices (see Jn.17:21-24). One will - unity.

Behemoth is the “chief” or “first” of God’s ways (Job 40:19). The word “first” here is not a reference to chronology, but to the largeness of the creature as seen in the extension of the plural behemoth. Here is a monster to be dealt with and he must be dealt with by his Maker.

What is it that can only be dealt with by the Maker? The pride of man’s self-will and the extension of that pride generation after generation of self-wills of men born in the flesh. In the multiplying of sons of man would be the multiplying of the pride of man’s self-will, a behemoth to be dealt with.

Where does the pride of self reside? In the imagination of his heart. Jehovah drew Job a word picture to image the pride of self-will as a creature fellow with man. Jehovah calls on Job to consider the power and the greatness of this creature. “Behold behemoth, which I made with you; he eats grass as an ox” (Job 40:15). He is identified with a beast of the field, an ox, a servant figure.

Man, in his pride, self-engrossed, serves “self” and feeds on the thinking and the doing of the things of the flesh. “All flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers and the flower falls away” (1 Pet.1:24; Is.40:6-8; see Jas.1:10; Job 14:1- 2).

“His strength is in his loins and his force in the muscles as his belly” (Job 40:16). His strength or vigor in his loins and his force and ability or power in the sense of effort is in the navel of his belly. The Hebrew word used here translated “muscles” or  “navel” properly means “firm” or “hard.” Here it is used in its plural form, meaning “the firm hard parts of belly, the innermost parts of the being, the heart hardened in its thoughts and intents and desires.” A hardened heart insensible to the things of the Spirit by choice, the pride of self-will.

“He moves his tail as a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped [thighs are knit] together” (v17). The Hebrew word for “moves” means “to bend or curve” and commonly denotes “to be inclined; to desire or to please.” As easily as the wind bends the branches of the cedar, the will is bent to please the desires of pride of self, the pride of man’s self-will.

The Hebrew word for “stones” or “thighs” properly means “fear” or “terror” and is wrapped together compact, solid. The object of the description is to inspire a sense of the power of this creature; how strong he is, this creature made with man, this pride of self-will.

“His bones like strong pieces of bronze; his bones like bars of iron” (v18) is another emphasis on his strength. His strong pieces, his thinking, his desires and the determination of the will to have and to be unbendable. What is the strength of his power? His deceit lies hidden in the deepest recesses of the heart.

And “he is the first of the ways of God” (v19a), this creature who was made with man, first in size and strength, the greatest thing in size and strength made by God in His making of man in His image, the thing that would give God the greatest resistance to having man in His image. The greatest, largest, strongest enemy of God is the pride of the will of man. God had formed a body from the dust of the ground to have mankind for sons of God. Into that body Jehovah God Himself breathed a soul of life, a soul of spirit being (Gen.2:7). From the seed of that one man came forth all persons of mankind of human flesh.

And there with man is behemoth, God’s enemy and man’s enemy. Multiplied pride of the self-will of man. And man is so self-engrossed, so self-serving, he does not recognize himself to be at enmity with God in his mind, and therefore man is his own worst enemy. Man is self-deceived by his own thinking and his own desires and blind to the pride of his own self-will, and man is powerless to deal with his own pride of self-will when he does see it.

In an image, in a picture in the mind, you see things you do not actually see with your eyes. You see real things which are invisible to the physical eyes. Your imagination forms pictures of people or things you do not actually see.

Jehovah came to Job and drew him a picture in the imagination of Job’s heart. Jehovah drew the pride of self-will, which cannot actually be seen visibly, as a creature, a fellow with him. This is the only place in Scripture behemoth is used.

Man in the pride of his self-will lowers himself to the very place he abhors, that of being a mere created being. Man was not created to remain a mere created being of human flesh. Man was not brought forth complete. God had His Covenant purpose that each one of mankind should become a son of God in a body of flesh and bone of eternal life and enter God’s Kingdom to live with Him forever.

Man was given a will in the matter of God’s purpose. God would do all of the doing. God must do all the doing. Only God has the means of “life” and “light” and “love” to accomplish His purpose to have sons of God in His image (see Jn.1:1-14). God is life. He is light and He is love. God who made behemoth must Himself put His sword to the pride of man’s self-will.

Before the foundation of the world, in eternity past, Jehovah God had a way of having a Kingdom of sons of God in His image. So God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness” and He, God, covenanted with Himself to do so (Gen.1:26).

In His Covenant, God’s creation of mankind would be given the hope of eternal life (see 2 Tim.1:9-10; Tit.1:2). God would begin with a creation of mankind in flesh of human kind, in a body with temporary life in the blood. God’s image would be a body of flesh and bone of eternal life, a deathless body of glory (see Lk.24:36-43; Jn.20:19-27; 1 Cor.15:44; Phil.3:21).

The temporary body would be reproduced through the seed of man, a seed to bring forth a body after his kind, a body of human flesh, a temporary body. The eternal body would be brought forth from an incorruptible seed, the seed of eternal life. A seed of flesh of eternal life would bring forth a body of flesh and bone complete with eternal life, an immortal, imperishable body (see 1 Cor.15:35-57; 1 Pet.1:17-23).

In this way God would have born again sons of God sharing His image. Each person born in a body of human flesh of the seed of man would be offered the hope of eternal life through a new birth of the incorruptible seed. The begotten Son of God, who Himself is the incorruptible Seed, is freely given to man to be received as his very life for a body raised up out of the dead body of human flesh. In this way one born of the seed of man in a body of human flesh becomes complete in the Anointed Covenant Son, Jesus Christ with a flesh and bone body of eternal life.

These are parts of God’s ways to bring into being sons of God in His image, through the one way of His Covenant Son begotten out from the dead. Through giving mankind the freedom of willingly choosing to become a son of God through receiving the Gift of the Son in whom is the redemption and the eternal life for the body and the righteousness of God for the personal being, Jehovah God made behemoth.

In giving man the freedom of choice to exercise his will in the will of his Creator God, there is the alternative of man choosing to exercise his will to serve himself. Man, in having his own mind, could think his own thoughts and have his own way of thinking and, in having his own strong desires for himself in the here and now, could be drawn away from God with His future, as yet unseen, promises. Lifted up in the pride of his own self-will, mankind in the flesh of humanity could be drawn away from God’s purpose for him to be completed as a born son of God.

God must put His sword to the behemoth He made with man. Man in the body of human flesh with his pride of self-will must be put to death. To have sons of God there must be a way of redeeming the body and again giving it life. There must be a way of ransoming the soul and setting it free from the sin of choosing to have one’s own will over the will of His Creator. Man must be made safe from perishing forever.

God must have a Son who could go into death and put away sin once for all mankind and come through alive forevermore. That Son must be God. God is the only One who could withstand the holiness of the consuming of the sin of man’s self-will, without himself having been consumed.

God must cause His sword to approach His Son born of a virgin, the Man who is His fellow (Is.7:14; 9:6-7; Zech.13:7). And so He did, before the foundation of the world (Rev.13:8). Before He made man with self-will that could be expressed in pride, Jehovah put the sword to behemoth whom He had made. All is done in the Covenant God made with Himself in eternity past when He gave man hope of eternal life in His Anointed Son, Christ Jesus.

“God is not a man, that He should lie; nor is He the Son of man, that He should repent: Has He spoken and will He not do it: Or has He spoken and shall He not make it good?” (Num.23:19). God had promised Himself. God abides faithful. He cannot be unfaithful to Himself.

Our old man, the old man of all of us, was crucified with Christ, that the body of the sin might be rendered inoperative (see Rom.3:22-8:39). He that has died with Christ is freed from the sin of having his will over the will of his loving Creator Redeemer. He’s freed from the pride of self-will. He can lay down his thinking and live in his freedom.

Holiness necessitates an absolute setting aside of the old creation to put on Christ. That which was judged and done away at the cross must be replaced with that which is shared in Christ Jesus. We must not take credit for that which Divine grace has wrought in us. We must get the good out of chastening when we find ourselves in the presence of our Lord, who comes to give meaning to the affliction. We learn to trust our Lord and we learn to distrust ourselves. We learn the weakness of the flesh and that in our flesh dwells no good thing. We learn for understanding God’s purposes, so that His purposes are not only our salvation, but the desire of our will. Every Divine chastening has its afterwards of the peaceable fruit of righteousness and the recompense to see the end of the Lord - that we might become partakers of His holiness (Heb.12:10).

This concludes our lesson.