Why Are There Sea Monsters and Dragons in the Bible?
Leviathan, Serpents, Tannin, and Dragons. (Genesis 1:20, 21)
This is the fifth part of our series examining the image of water in the Bible. Over the next months, we’ll be looking at these verses to follow the image of water as it flows from Genesis to Revelation. This time we’re looking into the depths… at the “that’s no whale” sea monsters that swarm in the abyss.
Careful readers of Genesis 1 will notice God makes two kinds of things in the sea on the fifth day: “giant sea creatures” (as the ESV, NIV, and NASB put it) and everything else.
Here are the verses:
“Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.” And God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind; and God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:20-21)
The word translated here as “sea creatures” means much more than “whales.” The word in Hebrew is “tannin” and the literal definition is “dragon, serpent, sea monster, venomous snake.”
The word occurs 18 times in the Bible and is indirectly referenced several more times, such as in Revelation 12:9:
“And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.”
Or here’s another one from Isaiah 27:1:
“In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea."
From Genesis 1 onwards, tannin becomes one of the ways the Bible describes its monsters, the creatures that represent the (physical and spiritual) forces of evil who oppose God.
Wait. Monsters in the Bible?
In his book, Into the Woods, John Yorke makes the argument that every story is basically Jaws.
Think about it.
A dangerous monster threatens a community until one human takes it upon himself to slay the monster and restore peace to the community. Sound familiar? It is the plot of hundreds of Hollywood blockbusters. It is also a primary plot of the Bible.
Have you ever wondered why so many of God’s enemies are described with snake-like language? Or what the deal is with the references to monsters in the form of of Job’s leviathan, Revelation’s dragon, or Daniel’s beasts from the sea? Or why it was a serpent that came to tempt the first humans in Genesis 3? Or what Paul meant when he said that our true battle was not with flesh and blood but with the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm (Ephesians 6:12)?
Not all spiritual beings in the Bible are "the good guys." The Bible uses all kinds of images and language to talk about the spiritual forces of evil: serpents, demons, dragons, unclean spirits, the satan (a title, not a name), sea monsters, and other creatures of chaos. Ultimately, the plot of the Bible points toward a serpent-crushing savior, Jesus, who comes to put an end to the monster and its influence in the world.
This way of reading the storyline of the Bible isn’t written in neon on the marquee, but it’s there.
The Bible, like all great literature, is subtle. This language reveals an important but hidden dimension of what is really going on “behind the scenes” in the biblical story. And it paints an even bigger picture of what Jesus was up to—one he consistently tried to get people to see.
But if These Are Evil Sea Monsters, How Can the Fifth Day Still Be “Good”?
Exactly.
This is a subversive part of the story. It is saying that God made the sea monsters and rules them. They aren’t out of his control. They aren’t rival Gods with whom God must compete for dominance. As Psalm 104:26 puts it, “God made the leviathan so that it could play in the sea.”
This would have been a hot take in ancient times.
It begs the question: Why does Genesis seem nonchalant about these sea monsters? To understand why we need to remember every culture has stories and myths that shape the way that culture sees itself and the world. The pagan nations whose creation stories formed a large part of the cultural meta-narratives of ancient Mesopotamia saw these beings as evil ur-gods from whom the heroes of their pantheons wrested control of the world.
Babylon was one of Israel’s most powerful ancient neighbors, and every good Babylonian knew that the world was created when the chief Babylonian god, Marduk, battled an ancient sea monster, Tiamat. In the myth, Marduk killed Tiamat and used the creature’s body to make the heavens and the earth. Quite the violent beginning. In Genesis, however, there is something very different going on. By depicting the chaotic sea monsters as God’s creation, Genesis is showing that God has complete authority and rule over even the darkest powers.
By positioning Israel’s God so far above the sea monsters, Genesis puts God proportionally out of reach of Baal (Canaan) or Marduk (Babylon) or Re-Atum (Egypt). It was as if Genesis was saying, “That thing your god barely bested, my God made as his plaything.” No worries. No rivals to see here. All good.
God’s Power Over the Chaos Monster in the Old Testament
The authors of the Bible dip into monster imagery all over the place to depict God’s power over evil and to describe the spiritual forces of evil that instigate and energize human evil. Here are a few key examples:
Moses’ Staff
In the first chapters of the book of Exodus, the stage is set for a confrontation between God’s people and the evil empire, Egypt. God commissions Moses to partner with him for the confrontation, but Moses gets cold feet. He asks what to do if people don’t believe him. God gives him a miraculous sign, a transforming staff, to show that God is with him. What does God transform the staff into? A sword? A scepter? A lightning bolt? No. The staff becomes a serpent, and at Moses’ touch, it becomes a staff again.
This is a subtle clue that the confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh is not just happening on an earthly level. Spiritual combatants are involved. God is rescuing his people from slavery to the Egyptians, but he is also saving them from the power of the serpent—that ancient force of evil introduced in Genesis 3.
The Leviathan in the Psalms
In the Psalms, you occasionally get strange references to God overcoming sea monsters. For example, Psalm 74 says,
“You divided the sea by your might and broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan...” (vv. 13-14).
This is a post-apocalyptic psalm. God’s temple lies in ruins and its sanctuary has been burned and profaned. (Also, it is interesting to note that the destroyers of the temple are described as lumberjacks “swinging axes in a forest of trees.” Why are there trees in the temple? We’ll get there).
Here is a bit more of my take on Psalm 74 (and a poem about it to boot):
In the midst of that terrible scene, the psalmist expresses the power of God by remembering that it was God who divided the sea, separating the waters above from those below. God’s enemies are cast as the monsters of chaos whom God will rise up against and dominate.
Remember where we started: every story is the plot of Jaws.
Here God is the hero who fights back against the monster from the sea and divides the water to clear a space for order and life (again echoing Genesis 1). Also, notice that God confronts the sea monster by crushing its head, alluding the first messianic promise of the snake-crushing savior in Genesis 3:15.
Judgment on the Dragon
The prophets carry this image even further.
When Isaiah wants to remind the Israelites that God has enough power to protect them from their enemies, what image does he choose? The sea monster.
Isaiah writes,
"Was it not [God] who cut the sea monster into pieces, who pierced the dragon?” (Isaiah 51:9)
Ezekiel uses the same imagery for a different purpose when he says,
“Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon…” (Ezekiel 29:3)
Ezekiel isn’t just calling names; the term dragon is intentional. He is drawing a connection between the earthly kingdoms and the evil powers in rebellion against God’s kingdom. There is a dark power behind Pharoah’s earthly throne, the very monster all this imagery has been describing.
But if God is so dominant over the monsters of evil and chaos, why is there so much evil in the world?
Fair question. On page three of the Bible, an answer begins to develop.
In Genesis 3, we are introduced to a new character, the serpent (nachash). What do we know about this serpent? First, he is bad news. He is presented as a (pre-Fall) force of evil who seeks to subvert the good, ordered creation God has made—a chaos monster.
The serpent is the Bible’s first portrayal of evil and independence from God. From this point on, when the authors want to talk about evil, they use serpent and dragon imagery. Second, the serpent’s own chaos mission isn’t enough; he also tries to persuade others to join. The first humans take the bait, and a pattern is established: spiritual rebellion behind human rebellion; spiritual powers behind earthly evil. But God promises that though humanity will be oppressed by the serpent, one day a snake-crushing savior will come and deliver God’s people (Genesis 3:15).
Despite this rebellion, God still rules his creation and is always acting to restore peace and justice to it. After just three pages of the Bible, we’ve landed on the primary plot conflict of the biblical story. Disaster results when humans, who are meant to rule creation as partners with their creator, join instead with the monster’s rebellion against God.
Jesus Faces Down the Monster
In his ministry, Jesus carries forward God’s purpose to defeat evil. We finally arrive at the point of the movie when the hero takes it upon himself to slay the monster. How will Jesus, our hero, take on this task?
First, Jesus acknowledges the reality of our broken world, using the same Old Testament monstrous imagery to talk about an evil figure prowling behind the scenes of everyday events. But instead of talking about sea monsters or dragons, he used another, lesser-known title from the Hebrew Scriptures: the satan.
Today, we often think of “Satan” as a proper name, but it is actually a description. It means “the adversary.” In Hebrew, it often has the definite article (“the”) attached to the title, hence “the satan.”
The satan attacks Jesus the moment his ministry begins. Just after his baptism, filled with the Spirit, Jesus walks out into the wilderness to face down his enemy. It is the temptation from the snake in Genesis 3 all over again, but with a different result.
The satan tempts Jesus to summon the power that is rightfully his by seizing independence just like the first humans. It is as if the tempter is saying, “There is another way than God’s way.” Jesus quotes from the book of Deuteronomy and gives the answer Adam and Eve should have given: “There is only God’s way.”
From that point, Jesus’ adversary appears over and over in the pages of the Gospels. Jesus describes how the satan demanded that he might “have” Peter in order to “sift him like wheat” (Luke 22:31). He also said that he saw the satan fall like lightning from heaven (Luke 10:18). In a parable, Jesus said that sometimes when people hear his words, the satan comes along and interferes, so that his words don’t take root (Mark 4:15). In a dramatic argument with Jesus’ opponents, he tells them they are “children of the devil, who was a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44). True to his words, they pick up stones and try to kill him. The Gospel writers depict the satan’s hand even in the death of Jesus. Just before Jesus is betrayed, the satan “enters Judas,” who then hurries out to summon the very people who will put Jesus to death.
Then something unexpected happens. In the climactic event, Jesus is killed at the hands of the monster’s minions. But in dying, he slays the monster. N. T. Wright puts it this way:
“The violent death of the lamb has won the decisive victory over the monsters and their horrid kingdoms and over the old dragon, the satan himself.”
In killing Jesus, the satan brings about his own destruction. God’s people escape and the monster’s power is broken because the snake-crushing messiah is himself crushed and broken, just as Genesis 3:15 alluded he would be.
The writer of Hebrews explains this strange deliverance when he says that Jesus took on flesh so that “through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those that through the fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Hebrews 2:14-15). Jesus’ resurrection three days later showed that Jesus’ death was really a victory because now the snake-crusher has become the king (Ephesians 1:20).
The Dragon’s End
Wait a second.
If Jesus beat the monster when he died and was raised again, why is there still so much evil in the world? Perhaps that is the very question people were asking around the time John was writing the Book of Revelation. After all, decades had passed since Jesus’ resurrection, and his followers were being persecuted by enemies on every side.
In Revelation, John gives an answer to the question and a reason to hope in the midst of the monster’s evil. Revelation is written in the apocalyptic style, a type of ancient literature that uses a collage of symbols to communicate meanings. Because so many of its ideas are communicated in imagery, it can be hard to understand. It can also give unusually vivid portrayals and mysterious glimpses of what is really going on in the heavenly realm. And its message about the fate of the monstrous enemy, the Bible’s great villain, is a hopeful one.
In Revelation, the monster is not a slithering serpent but a mighty dragon.
The dragon launches his rebellion against God and is thrown down to the earth to continue his war against God’s people. A loud voice from heaven proclaims that though the adversary “accuses [God’s people] day and night,” they have “conquered him through the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 12:1-6).
Because Jesus conquered the monster, now his people are conquerors. Though the battle continues, its ending is certain. In fact, in the climax of the Book of Revelation, John has a vision of the monster’s destiny when “the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and the satan” is bound and cast out of the new creation forever (Revelation 20:1-3).
Back to Sea Monsters
This is how the Bible works. Key images start as seeds that are planted early in the biblical narrative—almost all of the major images and themes have their roots in Genesis 1-3. From there they grow and expand as later biblical writers, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, weave those images through their own writings.
The result is the story of the gospel told not four times (once per gospel) but a thousand times, each image and theme telling the story from a different angle and using different language.
This sheds new light on the question “Where is Jesus in the Old Testament?” Just pick up the thread of any of these key images. You’ll encounter Jesus and more than Jesus. As my biblical theology professor said, “When you wrap your head around these core themes, you will see the mind of God.”
Catch up with previous posts on the theme of water:
More Substacks from Andy:
Photo by Ludovic Charlet on Unsplash
An incredible study. Thank you so much for bringing much clarity to this subject.