Have you read The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle? It is one of the best-known of the Sherlock Holmes stories. It features a terrifying hound, ″an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen.″ The fear felt in the story is a small echo of the terror we are supposed to feel when we read the description of Leviathan in Job 41.

Finally, in the climax of God's second speech, He challenges Job to tame Leviathan. The description of this monster is supposed to terrify us. Imagine some vast sea monster, a many-headed sea serpent, with astonishing power and devastating ferocity. Then, multiply what you imagine by ten. This is the picture painted in chapter 41.

The Bible speaks of Leviathan elsewhere. Back in Job 3:8, we saw that he is a creature who has the power to delete Job's conception day or birthday from the calendar! In Isaiah 27:1, again he is a terrifying sea monster. In Psalm 74:12-14, he is a many-headed sea serpent; and when God defeats him, He establishes His power over day and night, sun and moon. Elsewhere, beasts are pictures of supernatural evil; we meet this imagery in the books of Daniel and Revelation (e.g., Daniel 7; Revelation 12:9, 20:2).

The monster Leviathan is a vivid picture to help us understand Satan. In his terribleness, it conveys to us something of the dark supernatural power of Satan and all his leagues of fallen angels. Here is a beast with the power of death.

Besides conjuring up the terror of Satan, the poem in Job 41 teaches us two things. First, and most obviously, Job is no match for this power. To be the judge of all the earth, Job will have to exercise power over Satan and all the hidden powers of evil in the universe. He cannot do this.

Second, and most strikingly, Leviathan or Satan is a creature and has no power independent of God. Verse 10 is important: if Leviathan is fierce (and he is), ″Who then is able to stand against me″ (v. 10)–that is, God? God controls Satan; Satan is, as Martin Luther vividly put it, ″God's Satan″. God is good; Satan is evil. But Satan has no independence from God. In some strange and wonderful way, the good and all-powerful God governs and directs even the powers of evil in the universe!

Job responds by admitting that God ″can do all things″, that He really does have complete and sovereign power over the whole universe, evil included (42:2). And now, at last, he repents with deep humility (v. 6).