Biblical Oddities: Rahab The Dragon

Anyone who has studied the book of Job has run across the mysterious Behemoth and Leviathan. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I believe that both of these creatures are dinosaurs. (If you want to read about them you can find the behemoth discussed in Job 40:15-24, and the leviathan discussed in Job 41:1-34.) Both of these creatures are fascinating and are well-worth studying, but they’re not what I want to focus on today. Instead I’d like to take a look at a much more obscure creature: Rahab the Dragon.

Now, in Joshua 2 the Bible tells us about a prostitute named Rahab who helped Israel’s spies escape from Jericho. That is not the Rahab that I am talking about. The Bible speaks of another Rahab:

Isaiah 51:9: “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?
10 Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?”

That mention is interesting, but it doesn’t tell us very much. There is another mention of Rahab in the book of Psalms:

Psalm 89:9 “Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them.
“10: Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain; thou hast scattered thine enemies with thy strong arm.”

Notice that in both of these passages Rahab is mentioned in conjunction with God’s power over the sea. It seems possible that Rahab may have been some kind of sea creature that God defeated. It’s tempting to think that Rahab may be a reference to some nation (such as Egypt), but the context of these passages simply do not support that.

It should be noted that Rahab is not the only mysterious sea creature that God has fought. The Bible uses the exact same language when it talks about Leviathan:

Isaiah 27:1: “In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.”

Psalm 74:13: “Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.
14 Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.”

Are Rahab and Leviathan the same creature? I don’t really know. What I do know is that they are both called dragons, they are both associated with the sea, and God promised to destroy both of them. Rahab seems to mean “proud” or “arrogant”, and God did say that the Leviathan was characterized by pride (Job 41:34). Rahab and Leviathan may well be the same animal.

There is yet another reference to Rahab, and that is in the book of Job. If you read the KJV you won’t see it, because the translators translated the word “Rahab” to mean “proud” instead of just inserting the name. But it is the same word. This is how the ESV translates it:

Job 26:12: “By his power he stilled the sea; by his understanding he shattered Rahab.”

Notice that once again Rahab is mentioned in conjunction with God’s power over the sea.

Taken together, these passages paint an interesting picture of a mysterious animal.