Etymologically
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לויתן

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Pronunciation

  • Tiberian: liwyāṯān[1]

Forms

לִוְיָתָן (liwyāṯān) noun, masculine[1][2]

Etymology

It is formed from Biblical Hebrew לִוְיָה (liwyâ, “wreath”) + -ān (-ān), literally “the coiled one”, from the root of twisting and winding.[3][4][2][5] Huehnergard sets it under the Semitic root ⟨lwy⟩ “to wind, twist”, which is Arabic لَوَى (lawā, “to twist”).[5][6] The same monster appears in the myths of Ugarit as Ugaritic ltn, vocalised /lōtān/ from older /lawtān/: it is “the fleeing serpent” and has several heads, as in Isaiah 27:1 and Psalm 74:14.[3][7] Lagarde thought it a foreign loanword, which the later dictionaries do not follow.[2][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word occurs six times in five verses, all in poetry and prophecy.[1] In Isaiah 27:1 the Lord will punish liwyāṯān nāḥāš bāriaḥ … liwyāṯān nāḥāš ʿăqallāṯôn, “Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent”, epithets that HALOT notes are also Ugaritic.[3][1] Psalm 74:14 says that God riṣṣaṣtā rāʾšê liwyāṯān, “crushed the heads of Leviathan”.[3][1]

Semantic evolution

In the Psalms and Job the monster of the myth is also a creature of God's world: Psalm 104:26 makes Leviathan a sea creature God formed to play in the sea, and Job 40:25 asks whether Job can draw it out with a hook;[2][8] BDB takes these as the whale and the crocodile, and Gesenius–Buhl reads Job 40 as the crocodile.[2][8] HALOT lists the other identifications: the ocean surrounding the earth, a sea dragon, the crocodile or the whale.[3] In Job 3:8 BDB sees a mythical dragon that causes eclipses, and in Psalm 74:14 a figure for Egypt.[2]

The Septuagint renders it Ancient Greek δράκων (drákōn, “dragon, serpent”).[1] Syriac and Jewish Aramaic kept the name, and in Syriac it also came to mean the crocodile.[9] Klein gives “whale” as a later sense, which is the usual meaning of Modern Hebrew לווייתן (livyatán).[4][10]

Timeline

  • Biblical poetry and prophecy – Isaiah 27:1, Psalms 74:14 and 104:26, Job 3:8 and 40:25.[1][2]
  • 3rd–2nd century BC – the Septuagint translates it as Ancient Greek δράκων (drákōn).[11][1]
  • 2nd century BC – 2nd century AD – eight occurrences in the Dead Sea Scrolls, one of them outside the biblical books.[12][13]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Leviathan, a many-headed sea monster or serpent of myth, defeated by God.[3][2]
  2. a great creature of the sea, perhaps the whale (Psalm 104:26).[2]
  3. perhaps the crocodile (Job 40:25).[2][8]

Descendants

  • Syriac ܠܘܝܬܢ (lwytn)[9]
  • Modern Hebrew לווייתן (livyatán)[10]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Clear Bible (2023–), MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets (Westminster Leningrad Codex, with Greek alignment), github.com/Clear-Bible/macula-hebrew, CC BY 4.0
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. לִוְיָתָן
  3. ^ a b c d e f Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. לִוְיָתָן
  4. ^ a b Klein, Ernest (1987), A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, Jerusalem: Carta; Haifa: University of Haifa, p. s.v. לִוְיָתָן
  5. ^ a b Huehnergard, John (2011), "Proto-Semitic Language and Culture" and "Semitic Roots", in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  6. ^ Lane, Edward William (1863–1893), An Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 parts, London: Williams and Norgate, p. 3015
  7. ^ del Olmo Lete, Gregorio; Sanmartín, Joaquín (2015), A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition, 3rd ed., transl. W. G. E. Watson, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. ltn
  8. ^ a b c d Gesenius, Wilhelm; Buhl, Frants (1915), Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 17th ed., Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, p. s.v. לִוְיָתָן
  9. ^ a b Kaufman, Stephen A., ed., Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon, Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, cal.huc.edu, p. s.v. לויתנ
  10. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  11. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 93
  12. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 143
  13. ^ Abegg, Martin G.; Jacobs, Jarod; Roorda, Dirk (2022), The Dead Sea Scrolls, Text-Fabric dataset, version 2.0.2, github.com/ETCBC/dss