Allusion is evidently made to the disagreeable nature of its flesh, which is penetrated with a strong musky odour, in verse 6: "Shall the companions make a banquet of him? Shall they part him among the merchants?"
And lastly, the foam raised by the lashing of the Crocodile's mighty tail, and the wake that is left behind it as it urges itself through the water, are mentioned in verses 31 and 32.
It is not unlikely that the word Leviathan also signified any of the larger inhabitants of the waters, whether marine or reptile, and that a whale or a Crocodile would be equally called by that name. In this sense we must interpret the well-known passage, Ps. civ. 24-26:
"O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches.
"So is this great and wide sea" (i.e. the Mediterranean), "wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts.
"There go the ships: there is that Leviathan, whom Thou hast made to play therein." In this passage the writer points to some large inhabitant of the Mediterranean, or the Great Sea, as it is called in Scripture, to distinguish it from the Sea of Galilee, and the only creature which would answer to the allusion must be one of the larger cetacean.
We also find that the Crocodile must be signified by the Hebrew word tannin, which occurs in several parts of Scripture, and which is sometimes translated as "dragon," and sometimes as "serpent," and sometimes as "whale." For example, in Exod. vii. 10, we find the well-known passage which relates the changing of Aaron's rod into a Tannin, or serpent, as the Authorized Version translates it. The Jewish Bible, however, simply renders the word as "huge creature." Next, we come to Deut. xxxii. 33: "Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps." This passage is rendered in the Jewish Bible as "Their wine is the fury of huge creatures, and the cruel venom [or head] of asps."
The same word occurs in Job vii. 12: "Am I a sea, or a whale [tannin], that thou settest a watch over me?" We also find it in Jer. ix. 11: "And I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons [tannin];" and the same image is repeated in x. 22: "Behold, the noise of the bruit is come, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah desolate, and a den of dragons." The same prophet again repeats the word in xiv. 6: "The wild asses did stand in the high places, they snuffed up the wind like dragons."