Locking Up The Raging Sea The Hostile Environment Of The Earth

What is more, while the notion that creation involved cosmic conflict is pervasive in the Old Testament, as it is in Mesopotamian myths, the emphasis on Yahweh’s sovereignty over other gods is unprecedented. In place of the demon-infested paranoia that plagued other cultures, in the Old Testament we find a robust confidence that “the whole earth is the Lord’s.” The existence of demons is admitted, but their ability to afflict humans—at least God’s people—is at this early stage of revelation strongly minimized.

To say that the inspired Old Testament view of God, humans and the world stands far above what we find in other ancient Near East literature, however, is not to suggest that it altogether lacks elements found in this literature. Like their neighbors and most other non-Western cultures, the Israelites held the conviction that the world is, at least to some extent, characterized by a state of cosmic war. The Hebrews’ intense monotheism did not prevent them from adopting the belief that the world was under siege by forces that were hostile to it. Understandably, given the surrounding cultures, they too expressed this by talking about such things as the raging waters that they believed encircled the earth, or the ferocious sea monsters that waged war upon it.

This theme constitutes one of the oldest and (judged by later revelation) one of the most profound elements of the cosmic warfare motif found in the Old Testament, though modern Bible readers often minimize or overlook it altogether. We shall review the most prominent examples of this motif.

Like all ancient Near Eastern peoples, the Israelites believed that the earth rested upon waters. When the author of Genesis 1 begins his creation account by referring, without explanation, to “the surface of the deep” (t^ehôm) and “the waters” (1:2), no ancient Near Eastern person would have had trouble understanding what he was speaking about. This was “the deep” or “the waters” on which everyone believed the earth had been founded (Ps 24:1-2). As a number of different creation accounts in the Old Testament make clear, Old Testament authors believed that, in some primordial chaotic form (see Gen 1:2), the earth was originally completely engulfed by water—“the deep”—but that Yahweh pushed back the waters to make dry land appear. He separated the waters below the earth (upon which its “foundations” rest) from the waters above the earth, holding up the latter with the stretched-out “expanse” (Gen 1:6-10; Ps 24:1-2; 104:2-9; Prov 8:27; Job 9:8; 38:6-12).

Now in the Genesis account, the “waters have been not only neutralized, but demythologized and even depersonalized.”33 Perhaps as a means of emphasizing God’s complete sovereignty in creation (or complete victory over anticreation forces of chaos; see chapter three below), and perhaps in order to express unambiguously the altogether novel conviction that the physical world is in and of itself “good,” the author presents the many “gods” of his Near Eastern neighbors as strictly natural phenomena.

Hence the “deep” that in Enuma Elish was represented as the evil Tiamat is here simply water. Far from battling it, Yahweh’s “Spirit” (or “breath” or “wind”) simply “sweeps” or “hovers” over it (1:2).34 So too, the stars, moon and sun, which Babylonian and Canaanite literature viewed as enslaved rebel gods, are here simply things that Yahweh has created (1:14-19). The expanse, the earth and human beings, far from being carved out of the bodies of defeated gods, are simply spoken into existence by God with the rest of creation (1:6-10, 26-27). In creating the world, according to this author, Yahweh has no competitors.35

Yahweh and personified hostile waters. Not all Old Testament passages demythologize water in this fashion, however. Some texts follow the pagan Near Eastern traditions more closely and express the conviction that while the creation itself is good, something in the foundational structure of the cosmos exhibits hostility toward Yahweh. While God created the world under a “cosmic covenant” of peace, as Robert Murray puts it, this primordial covenant has been broken, and the creation itself has fallen into a state of war.36 To express this breach of covenant and its ensuing war in the context of ancient Near Eastern culture meant talking about personified hostile waters.

From this perspective, the mythological Mesopotamian and Canaanite stories about Tiamat, Leviathan or Yamm could be seen as erroneous, but not altogether erroneous. Insofar as they express the conviction that something about the cosmic environment of the earth (“the waters”) was, and still is, hostile toward Yahweh and toward humanity, the biblical authors could understand these stories to express a profound truth. Insofar as they expressed this truth, this dissolution of the cosmic covenant, they could be appropriated into the inspired canon, so long as it was made clear that Yahweh, not the divine heroes of the surrounding cultures, defeated these foes and restored order to the cosmos.

For example, the psalmist affirms Yahweh’s sovereignty in creation in a way ancient Israelites could understand when he says of the Lord: “You stretch out the heavens like a tent, you set the beams of your chambers on the waters. . . . You set the earth on its foundations” (104:2-3, 5). But, precisely as part of his emphasis on Yahweh’s sovereignty, the psalmist adds that it was at Yahweh’s (not Baal’s or Marduk’s) “rebuke” that “[the waters] flee” and “at the sound of your thunder they take to flight” (v. 7). It was, moreover, the Lord and no other who gave these rebel waters their assigned place (v. 8) and who “set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth” (v. 9). Not only the general concepts, but even the very wording of this ancient revelatory poem correlates with Canaanite accounts of Baal’s conflict with Yamm.37

Similarly, the author of Proverbs 8 states that Yahweh “established the fountains of the deep” (t^ehôm) and “assigned the sea [yam] its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command” (vv. 27-29). The author here plainly understands God’s act of creation to have involved some type of conflict with cosmic chaos, but also clearly portrays Yahweh as being more than up to the task.

Similarly, the author of Job, perhaps transforming another Canaanite hymn, records Yahweh inquiring of Job as follows:

On what were [the earth’s] bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone? . . . Who shut in the sea [yam] with doors when it burst out from the womb?—when I . . . prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped”? (Job 38:6-11)38

As Jon Levenson notes, we have here

a sense of the Sea as a somewhat sinister force that, left to its own, would submerge the world and forestall the ordered reality we call creation. What prevents this frightening possibility is the mastery of YHWH, whose blast and thunder . . . force the Sea into its proper place.39

Similarly, in another passage that many scholars believe directly echoes (but transforms) a Canaanite hymn, the psalmist writes:

The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD, over mighty waters. The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. . . . The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD sits enthroned as king forever. (Ps 29:3-4, 10)40

The point of these passages is clearly to stress that Yahweh (and no other god) reigns supreme over the “proud” chaotic waters that threaten the foundation of the earth. Indeed, unlike Baal, Tiamat, Enki or any other Near Eastern hero who is said to have controlled the chaos, Yahweh’s sovereignty is such that he can master these destructive forces by his mighty voice alone. Unlike the pagan gods, Yahweh does not even need a weapon! The voice that simply speaks the world into existence simply speaks control over the forces that threaten the world.41

Nevertheless, it is important to note that these passages do not take Yahweh’s supremacy over the waters to entail that the waters are not really hostile to God and do not pose a genuine threat to the earth. The supremacy of Yahweh in these passages is predicated on just the opposite conviction.42 A very real battle took place when God created the world, and it is still taking place as Yahweh (not Baal or Marduk) preserves the world from chaos. As Levenson again expresses it, “Creation endures because God has pledged in an eternal covenant that it shall endure and because he has, also in an eternal covenant, compelled the obeisance of his great adversary.”43

Yamm as God’s opponent. The motif of raging waters occurs in a number of other Old Testament contexts as well. In a passage that many scholars believe mentions the Canaanite god Yamm by name, the psalmist writes: “How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever? . . . You divided the sea [yam] by your might; you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters” (Ps 74:10, 13).

This passage, which is possibly echoing another Canaanite hymn, seems to identify yam with “the dragons in the sea,” and the monster is clearly a mocking enemy of Yahweh. The author is affirming the Canaanite imagery of order fighting cosmic chaos, but crediting Yahweh rather than Baal with the victory.44 In typical Near Eastern and biblical fashion, he is portraying this chaos as a hostile, rebellious sea monster.

As Levenson notes, the whole tenor of the passage testifies to the author’s belief in the authenticity of Yahweh’s struggles against the forces of chaos. Yahweh’s cosmic victory over evil is “invoked here precisely when conditions have rendered belief in God’s mastery most difficult.”45 Though the psalmist affirms God’s “power to defeat even the primeval personifications of chaos,” he refuses to “pretend that there is some higher or inner world in which . . . horrific events are not known.”46 In short, even though God is in an ultimate sense sovereign, for the psalmist his battles with evil are not on this account in any sense a sham. In contrast to Augustine, the psalmist sees that evil and thus warfare are absolutely real for God just as they are for his creation.

Yamm may also be referred to by name in Job’s frank question to Yahweh about the way he had been treated: “Am I the Sea [yam], or the Dragon, that you set a guard over me?” (Job 7:12). In other words, he is objecting to being treated like one of God’s cosmic opponents, Yamm. The sea monster Yamm, he acknowledges, needs to be kept under guard, but why Job?47 Similar references to Yamm may perhaps be found in Job 9:8, which speaks of Yahweh treading “the waves of the Sea” [yam], and Habakkuk 3:8-15, which speaks of Yahweh’s “rage against the sea [yam]” that “roared and lifted its waves on high” (3:8, 10). The author then proclaims, “You trampled the sea [yam] with your horses, churning the mighty waters” (3:15).48

This last reference seems to combine elements of the cosmic conflict motif with the historic deliverance of Israel out of Egypt (cf. vv. 12-13), a combination that occurs elsewhere. Thus Isaiah 51:9-11 also sees Yahweh’s deliverance of the children of Israel through the Red Sea as a type of “Yahweh’s cosmogonic battle with Yamm.”49 Isaiah first proclaims how Yahweh “cut Rahab in pieces” and “pierced the dragon” (v. 9). Rahab, we shall see, is one of the names for the sea monster(s) Israelites believed inhabited the waters surrounding the earth. Isaiah then continues by proclaiming that it was Yahweh who “dried up the sea [yam], the waters of the great deep [t^ehôm],” and thus “made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to cross over” (v. 10). Isaiah sees in the parting of the Red Sea a reenactment of (and perhaps a renewed victory over) the great sea monster Rahab. The one victory is a microcosm of the other.

The same thing seems to occur in Psalm 77:16, where the psalmist speaks about Yahweh’s parting of the Red Sea in terms that sound much like a Canaanite cosmic battle myth: “When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid; the very deep trembled.” He then concludes, “Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen” (v. 19). Again, the Red Sea that would have held Israel in captivity is here seen as a type of the raging cosmic waters that, if not for Yahweh’s power, would have held the very order of creation in captivity.

A similar phenomenon occurs in Psalm 74:10-17, where the psalmist cries out for Yahweh to silence his (and Israel’s) enemies as he did when he split open Yamm and “crushed the heads of Leviathan” (vv. 13-14), Leviathan being yet another sea monster personifying cosmic chaos. So also the Lord’s overthrow of Nineveh is celebrated as God’s victory over Yamm (Nah 1:4).50 Earthly battles against evil mirror and reenact cosmic battles against evil. When Israel’s enemies “roar” against it, the roar of the raging primordial sea is heard. When Yahweh sets these enemies fleeing with his rebuke, his victory over this raging sea is accomplished once again (cf. Is 17:12-13).51 When Israel is conquered, however, it is like being swallowed and then spewed out by the mighty sea serpent (Jer 51:34; cf. v. 55).

Given the general cultural context within which all this is being written, one cannot take these statements as mere metaphors. We have simply no reason to assume that the biblical authors did not believe that these cosmic monsters existed. To the contrary, such expressions make sense only on the assumption that the biblical authors did believe in the existence of these anticreation cosmic forces, and did believe that Yahweh had to genuinely battle them.

Leviathan is alive and well on planet earth. But the central point of such expressions was not simply to assert as a piece of theoretical information the sheer existence of these various cosmic chaos creatures. This much everyone at the time took for granted. Rather, these hymns express the authors’ perception that the cosmos is besieged at a structural level with forces of evil that God himself must battle: evil is not a minor anomalous occurrence on the otherwise pristine stage of the world. They also express the deep biblical conviction that this same warfare is played out in the life of God’s children as they confront their enemies.

In other words, this cosmic warfare is not a thing of the past, nor is it a war that occurs “in the heavenlies,” nor is it a war that God fights alone. To the contrary, the thrust of this last group of passages is to proclaim that this war is a present struggle, it occurs in human history, and it very much involves the human race, especially those who know God. The insight is that all who name the name of the Lord are called to identify and resist, in the power of God, the structural forces of evil that work to thwart God’s plan for the earth in general and for humanity in particular. When we fight, we do not do so on our own power, but God himself reenacts his primal victory over these destructive forces through us.

For the ancient Israelites, there was no bifurcation between what occurs “in heaven” and what occurs “on earth,” and neither should there be with us, if our perspective is to be truly biblical. We might (and must) express and apply this ancient biblical conviction in our own times by identifying and then resisting “the cosmic serpent” in the structural evil that besieges our own culture and the church of God. For example, when we resist the spiritual complacency and empty religiosity that has deeply infected much of Western Christianity at a structural level, we participate in God’s cosmic battle with Leviathan. When we fight the ongoing tendency to compromise the radicality of the gospel by identifying it with this or that political ideology, or by allowing it to be taken hostage by this or that cultural ideal or movement, we are resisting “the twisting serpent.”

But Israel’s battles with hostile waters were not always religious in nature, and neither are ours. When we “take up arms” against corporate greed, and when we follow the call of the Lord in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, befriending the guilty, embracing the socially repulsive, and siding with victims, we are participating in God’s cosmic struggle against cosmic chaotic forces of destruction. Similarly, when we strive to be responsible stewards of the earth we were originally given responsibility over (Gen 1:28-29) and resist the fallen tendency to rape it for our own convenience, we are fighting anticreation forces that are attempting to thwart God’s plan for the earth.

Moreover, when we refuse to benefit from another culture’s (or our own) slave labor, and when we come against governments that systematically oppress the masses, we are taking up arms against Rahab. When we expose and confront the many subtle forms of structural hatred that presently choke our own culture, whether in the form of systematic prejudice, institutional injustice, or the demonization of other peoples in the name of nationalism, we participate with God in the same spiritual battle that has been going on since the dawn of history.

What occurs on earth, again, is a replica and a mirror of what occurs in heaven. Indeed, it is a microcosmic example of the macrocosmic spiritual struggle. In God’s power, we are mandated to join in the fight.

The seas and individual struggles. The cosmic war is not only fought on a structural or corporate level, however. From a biblical perspective, evil affects everything at every level and therefore must be fought on every level as well. Thus individual struggles also reflect a dimension of this cosmic war.

Hence biblical authors occasionally express their personal woes in terms that are reminiscent of the ancient Near Eastern conflict myths. For example, the psalmist cries out to God, “Rescue me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. Do not let the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the Pit close its mouth over me” (Ps 69:14-15). And again, “Stretch out your hand from on high; set me free and rescue me from the mighty waters, from the hand of aliens” (144:7).

Given the original cultural context within which they were written, these statements cannot be taken as mere poetic flourishes. To the contrary, the very meaning of such expressions in ancient culture was predicated on the belief that such demonic realities actually existed. Hence in a manner that resembles Jesus’ portrayal of Peter as a channel for Satan (whom Jesus certainly believed was real, Mt 16:23), David is portraying his enemies as conduits for the destructive cosmic forces he truly believes in. Indeed, like Jesus, David here actually identifies his enemies with these raging rebellious cosmic waters.

Elsewhere, David compares the proud and rebellious cosmic seas, which lifted themselves up against God at the time of creation, to the enemies who now rail against him (Ps 93:3-4). Just as the Lord defeated rebellious chaotic forces at the time of creation and throughout the ages past, so David now cries out for God once again to defeat these forces, as exhibited in his enemies.52 All this is clearly predicated on the belief that these raging seas and cosmic monsters are real and can be confronted in individual struggles.

Such a motif should not be taken as giving us carte blanche to demonize all our personal enemies—a tendency that can itself certainly be demonic! But it does entail that individual believers are not to be “ignorant of [Satan’s] designs” (2 Cor 2:11). When we wrestle individually with forces that seek to destroy us, whether it be literal physical enemies who seek our life, as with David, or emotional, psychological and spiritual forces that seek to incapacitate us, we are combating powers that oppose God’s will for our life. In short, our personal struggles have a cosmic, spiritual dimension.

Not that prayer is the cure-all for such maladies; David certainly did not respond to all his battles with Yamm only in this fashion. Rather, prayer is only one form (albeit a crucial form) of spiritual warfare. We resist the anticreation forces that oppose God whenever we do anything that genuinely restores creation—including ourselves as central features of God’s creation—to the place where God originally planned it to be. As the Israelites never bifurcated the heavenly from the earthly, so we should never bifurcate the spiritual from the earthly and the practical. For example, we have every biblical reason to assume that the discovery and use of medication, the development and use of Christ-centered counseling, and the committed tough love of friends walking beside us to keep us accountable, to help us overcome temptation, and to encourage us when we fall are all forms of spiritual warfare.

While believers today cannot affirm as literal the mythological portrayals of the cosmic forces that the biblical authors give us, we can and must affirm the reality to which these mythological portrayals point. There was and still is something hostile to God at a cosmic level, infecting the cosmos at a structural level, which he has battled and must continue to battle to establish and preserve his good creation. Moreover, this is a battle that all who side with God are called to participate in.

Put in a nutshell, the Old Testament assumes a type of warfare worldview and thus views the very creation and preservation of the earth as something that has to be fought for. There is, at this point of revelation, little reflection as to why these forces are hostile to God or how the continued existence of these forces squares with God’s omnipotence. Later revelation will begin to address these questions. For now, simply note that the texts do not necessarily imply that the evil forces are either primordial (viz., not created) or willed by God (common positions argued sometimes by contemporary scholars). Rather, the nature of both the cosmic forces and the demonic spirits seem to be such that they ought to have been different than they are and hence are sometimes explicitly portrayed as rebellious (following Near Eastern parallels).

Later revelation, as well as church tradition, portrays these powers as having been involved in a freely chosen mutiny—the view that alone allows us to affirm the full reality of the evil these powers represent, while also holding to the omnipotence and utter uniqueness of the one eternal Creator.53

Far from holding to any view of the world as meticulously following a divinely ordained blueprint, the Old Testament operates with the assumption that Yahweh faces real opposition, and this opposition concerns forces that are foundational to creation. While the whole cosmos was originally created good, at some early point something went profoundly wrong at a structural level. Only God’s fighting on our behalf preserves the order of the world.

As we shall now see, however, to have said this much is to have hardly begun to flesh out the full dimension of the Old Testament’s understanding of God’s cosmic opponents. We have yet to consider Leviathan, Rahab and Behemoth, to which we now turn.