"That the mountains should bring forth food for him, and all the beasts of the field play there.
"He lieth under wild lotuses, in the covert of the reed, and fens.
"Wild lotuses cover him with their shadow; willows of the brook compass him about.
"Behold, should a river overflow, he hasteth not: he feels secure should Jordan burst forth up to his mouth.
"He taketh it in with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares."
We will now take this description in detail, and see how far it applies to the now familiar habits of the hippopotamus. A little allowance must of course be made for poetical imagery, but we shall find that in all important details the account of the Behemoth agrees perfectly with the appearance and habits of the hippopotamus.
In the first place, it is evident that we may dismiss from our minds the idea that the Behemoth was an extinct pachyderm. The whole tenor of the passage shows that it must have been an animal then existing, and whose habits were familiar to Job and his friends. Now the date of the Book of Job could not have been earlier than about 1500 B.C., and in, consequence, the ideas of a palæozoic animal must be discarded.
We may also dismiss the elephant, inasmuch as it was most unlikely that Job should have known anything about the animal, and it is certain that he could not have attained the familiarity with its appearance and habits which is inferred by the context. Moreover, it cannot be said of the elephant that "he eateth grass as an ox." The elephant feeds chiefly on the leaves of trees, and when he does eat grass, he cannot do so "like an ox," but plucks it with his proboscis, and then puts the green tufts into his mouth. So characteristic a gesture as this would never have passed unnoticed in a description so full of detail.
That the hippopotamus was known to the ancient Hebrews is certain. After their sojourn in Egypt they had necessarily become familiarized with it; and if, as most commentators believe, the date of the Book of Job be subsequent to the liberation of the Israelites, there is no difficulty in assuming that Job and his companions were well acquainted with the animal. Even if the book be of an earlier date, it is still possible that the hippopotamus may, in those days, have lived in rivers where it is now as much extinct as it is in England. Mr. Tristram remarks on this point: "No hippopotamus is found in Asia, but there is no reason for asserting that it may not have had an eastern range as far as Palestine, and wallowed in the Jordan; for its bones are found in the débris of the rivers of Algeria, flowing into the Mediterranean, when tradition is quite silent as to its former existence.
"Several extinct species of hippopotamus have been found in the later tertiary deposits, both of England and other countries of Europe, embedded in gravel which contains shells of many existing species of the locality, showing that the temperature has not much changed, and that some of the fossil species were natives of cold and temperate climes."