How to Read Biblical References to Dragons

Dragons, or dragon-like sea monsters, play an important role in the creation stories of many ancient Near Eastern peoples. In all of these stories, the dragon represents both primeval chaos and the sea, and is slain by a chief god of the sky or storms who thereby brings order to the world. Apparent references to such creatures, either with the term tanin or Leviathan, also occur in the Hebrew Bible. Genesis 1:21 states that “God created the great sea monsters [taninim],” while Psalm 74 states of God, “Thou didst divide the sea by Thy strength: Thou brakest the heads of the dragons [taninim] in the waters. Thou brakest the heads of Leviathan in pieces.” Robert Miller II explains the meaning of these verses:

[T]he dragon-slaying myth is a metaphor trying to say something about the nature of the universe and the political force that kept order on earth. . . . Many societies with dragon imagery—India, the Hurrians [of ancient Syria], Hittites, Israelites—were never seagoing people, so for them the sea was terrifying. The sea is huge, and you don’t know what’s out there, and when it (or she) gets kicked up into a storm, the result is utter chaos.

And that’s what life is for most people: existence on the verge of chaos. The storm god—and your king—fight against that chaos. . . . [A]t the same time, the myth is political propaganda because in every case the human king is the representative of the storm god in his victorious aspect on earth. The king is your guarantee of security. . . .

When Israel says God defeated the dragon, they use this myth in two ways. Most of the time, . . . they are saying, “Whatever you Canaanites mean when you say, ‘Our god defeated the dragon,’ it’s true of our God, not yours.”

The other way biblical authors use the myth is to say to their neighbors, “Your god had to fight this battle against the dragon. You think it’s his greatest accomplishment, whatever that dragon is. For our God, it’s actually nothing at all.” [Thus], at the end of the book of Job (41:1-5), God says about the Leviathan: “Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope? . . . Can you make a pet of it like a bird or put it on a leash for the young women in your house?” To God, the Leviathan is nothing.

Read more at Ancient Near East Today

More about: Babylon, Hebrew Bible, Leviathan, Paganism, Religion & Holidays

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society