Rahab

Rahab is a primeval sea monster named in the Hebrew Bible, a symbol of the raging, arrogant sea that God crushed at creation, and later a poetic nickname for Egypt.

The Story

Rahab never gets a full story in the Bible. Instead, Hebrew poets mention it in passing, as though their listeners already knew a tale in which God defeated a monster of the sea. Job 26:12 says that God stilled the sea by his power and "by his understanding he smote through Rahab." Psalm 89:10 says, "Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain." Job 9:13 mentions the "helpers of Rahab" who bowed beneath God's anger, which recalls the monster armies of other Near Eastern myths.

The clearest passage is Isaiah 51:9–10, a call for God to wake up and act as he did in ancient days: "Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? Art thou not it which hath dried the sea?" Here Rahab stands beside the tannin, the sea dragon, and the drying of the sea is linked to the crossing of the Red Sea at the Exodus.

Appearance and Powers

No biblical verse describes Rahab's body. Its name comes from a Hebrew root meaning to storm, rage, or act arrogantly, and it is always connected with the sea and with pride. The King James Version sometimes hides the name, translating it as "the proud" (Job 26:12) or "the proud helpers" (Job 9:13). Because the texts give no physical details, this entry leaves most traits open.

This Rahab is not the same as Rahab of Jericho, the woman who sheltered Israelite spies in the Book of Joshua. The two names are spelled differently in Hebrew.

Origins and Sources

Scholars see Rahab as one of several Hebrew names for the chaos monster of the sea, alongside Leviathan and Tannin. The idea belongs to the wider Near Eastern theme of the storm god's battle with the sea, known from the Ugaritic myths of Baal and Lotan and the Babylonian story of Marduk and Tiamat. Hermann Gunkel's Creation and Chaos (1895) first set out this comparison in detail. John Day has argued that the Hebrew traditions draw mainly on Canaanite rather than Babylonian sources.

The prophets turned the monster into a political symbol. Isaiah 30:7 mocks Egypt as "Rahab who sits still," a boastful power that will do nothing to help, and Psalm 87:4 uses Rahab simply as a name for Egypt.

Legacy

Later Jewish tradition gave Rahab a role at creation. The Babylonian Talmud (Bava Batra 74b) calls Rahab the prince of the sea, who refused God's command to gather up the waters and was killed for it. For the other biblical sea dragons, see Dragons in the Bible and Leviathan.

Related

• Leviathan: Leviathan is the great sea monster of the Hebrew Bible, a fire-breathing, scale-armored serpent of the deep that only God can tame, descended from the Canaanite sea serpent Lotan.
• Lotan: Lotan, properly Litan, is the seven-headed sea serpent of Canaanite myth known from the clay tablets of Ugarit, defeated by the storm god Baal and his sister Anat, and the forerunner of the biblical Leviathan.
• Tiamat: Tiamat is the primordial salt-water sea goddess of the Babylonian creation epic Enūma Eliš, who raised an army of monsters against the gods and was split in two by Marduk to make heaven and earth.
• Great Red Dragon of Revelation: The Great Red Dragon is the seven-headed, ten-horned dragon of the Book of Revelation, identified as Satan, who wars against heaven, is cast down by the archangel Michael, and is finally thrown into the lake of fire.
• Dragons in the Bible
• Leviathan
• The History of Dragons

Sources and Further Reading

• The Holy Bible, King James Version (1611), Job 9, 26; Psalms 87, 89; Isaiah 30, 51
• John Day, God's Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea: Echoes of a Canaanite Myth in the Old Testament (Cambridge University Press, 1985)
• Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst, eds., Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed. (Brill/Eerdmans, 1999), s.v. "Rahab"
• Hermann Gunkel, Creation and Chaos in the Primeval Era and the Eschaton, trans. K. William Whitney Jr. (Eerdmans, 2006)

Cite this entry: “Rahab,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/rahab.