"God created the sea-serpents" (Gen 1:21)
Reading through the story of creation
21 God created the sea-serpents וַיִּבְרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֔ים אֶת־הַתַּנִּינִ֖ם הַגְּדֹלִ֑ים
There are two words in this incredibly short phrase that are going to take up all of today’s post. We’ll finish the rest of this verse without difficulty on Tuesday. There are certainly some things worth talking about there, too — but nothing quite as loud as these two: ברא bara and תנין tannin.
We have been waiting since the second word of the Bible (בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים ‘when God began to create’) to see God actually perform this promised action of creation. We have seen God do six different verbs, if I’m counting correctly:
אמר ‘think’
ראה ‘see’
הבדיל ‘separate’
קרא ‘name’
עשׂה ‘make’
נתן ‘put’
… and we have seen the world responding on its own to his expressed intentions. The Sky and Earth whose creation are described as the point of this story do both exist by now. The Sky was made on Day Two, but we did not read there “God created the Sky.” He made the cupola and named it Sky. The Earth appeared on Day Three, but we did not read there “God created the Earth.” He thought it would be a good idea if the water moved aside and it did so; the dry land appeared, and God named it Earth.
Neither Sky nor Earth was created, which is what Gen 1:1 made us think we were going to be reading about. Now, at last, something is.
I will remind you that only God can do this verb ברא. Yet he hasn’t had to do it until now, when God “creates” a sea-serpent.
As you remember, in v. 20, God thought, “Let the water swarm with life, and let birds fly over the Earth across the Sky cupola.” You might imagine that v. 21 would say, “And it was so: The water swarmed with life, and birds flew over the Earth.” Have no fear, the seas will shortly swarm with life. But the first of those creatures is singled out specifically for mention: the sea-serpents, or, as you might have seen these words translated:
great whales (KJV)
the great sea monsters (NRSV)
They are indeed called “great” or “big” (הַגְּדֹלִ֑ים ha-gedolim), but sea-serpents always are, which is why I left the adjective out of my translation. With apologies to King James, these are not whales, but coelacanths. Think Loch Ness monster.
A tannin that is not gadol can “simply” be a serpent, though it won’t be found at sea. In Exod 4:3 God shows Moses how to turn a rod into a snake (נחשׁ naḥash), but when Aaron repeats the trick for Pharaoh in Exod 7:11, the rod instead becomes a tannin. Ps 91:13 assures those who are under God’s protection that they will be able to trample on a lion or a tannin without fear.
So what is the big deal? Why must this be first thing that God actually creates with the verb ברא that only God can do?
Isa 51:9 (given here in the New JPS translation) points us to the answer:
Awake, awake, clothe yourself with splendor.
O arm of the Lord!
Awake as in days of old,
As in former ages!
It was you that hacked Rahab in pieces,
That pierced the Dragon.
The JPS translation has little footnotes on Rahab and Dragon identifying them as “Names of primeval monsters.” As you may have already guessed, the word they are translating as “Dragon” is תַּנִּֽין. Ten of the 14 occurrences of the word in the Bible are not snakes as in Exodus 7 or Psalm 91, but dragons or even monsters. The Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible explains:
Rahab is one of the names in the OT of the chaos monster(s) (cf. also Leviathan, Tannin, Tehom [Tiamat], and Yam).
Follow the link on Tehom (“Deep”) back to Gen 1:2 and you will remember that we have discussed this topic before. Genesis 1 regularly alludes to other versions of the creation story in which creation was not the result of a calm, pre-planned process but a great theogony, a cosmic battle between gods. (Yam means “sea”; Leviathan is not mentioned in Genesis, but you will find him alongside tanninim in Isa 27:1 and Ps 74:13–14.)
God simply “made” the Sky (Day Two) and the lights to put in it (Day Four), and the Earth (Day Three) was apparently in existence already when the story began, though it was still underwater at the time. But now life will begin to fill the Sky, Seas, and Earth, and the very first life form is created [ברא] by God. We’ll talk more about that when we get to the second time God will ברא something, on Day Six.
Why even have any of these primordial dragons, the ones that in creation stories provide the antagonist who must be defeated before our world can come into existence? This time, it is Ps 104:26 that tells us:
There go the ships, and Leviathan, whom You formed to play with.
God has made a pet for himself. The rest of the creatures of Sea and Sky will have to wait to be created until Tuesday.