Job 40:15-18 15 Behold now the behêmôth,
Which I have made with thee:
He eateth grass like an ox. 16 Behold now, his strength is in his loins,
And his force in the sinews of his belly. 17 He bendeth his tail like a cedar branch,
The sinews of his legs are firmly interwoven. 18 His bones are like tubes of brass,
His bones like bars of iron. בּהמות (after the manner of the intensive plur. הוללות, חכמות, which play the part of the abstract termination), which sounds like a plur., but without the numerical plural signification, considered as Hebrew, denotes the beast κατ ̓ ἐξοχήν, or the giant of beasts, is however Hebraized from the Egyptian p - ehe - mau, (muau), i.e., the (p) ox (ehe) of the water (mau as in the Hebraized proper name משׁה). It is, as Bochart has first of all shown, the so-called river or Nile horse, Hippopotamus amphibius (in Isa 30:6, בּהמות נגב, as emblem of Egypt, which extends its power, and still is active in the interest of others), found in the rivers of Africa, but no longer found in the Nile, which is not inappropriately called a horse; the Arab. water-hog is better, Italian bomarino, Eng. sea-cow ?, like the Egyptian p - ehe - mau. The change of p and b in the exchange of Egyptian and Semitic words occurs also elsewhere, e.g., pug' and בּוּץ, harpu and חרב (ἅρπη), Apriu and עברים (according to Lauth). Nevertheless p - ehe - mau (not mau - t, for what should the post-positive fem. art. do here?) is first of all only the בהמות translated back again into the Egyptian by Jablonsky; an instance in favour of this is still wanting. In Hieroglyph the Nile-horse is called apet ; it was honoured as divine. Brugsch dwelt in Thebes in the temple of the Apet.
In Job 40:15 עמּך signifies nothing but “with thee,” so that thou hast it before thee. This water-ox eats חציר, green grass, like an ox. That it prefers to plunder the produce of the fields - in Arab. chadı̂r signifies, in particular, green barley - is accordingly self-evident. Nevertheless, it has gigantic strength, viz., in its plump loins and in the sinews (שׁרירי, properly the firm constituent parts, therefore: ligaments and muscles) of its clumsy belly. The brush of a tail, short in comparison with the monster itself, is compared to a cedar (a branch of it), ratione glabritiei, rotunditatis, spissitudinis et firmitatis (Bochart); since the beast is in general almost without hair, it looks like a stiff, naked bone, and yet it can bend it like an elastic cedar branch; חפץ is Hebraeo-Arab., ḥfḍ is a word used directly of the bending of wood (el - ‛ûd).
Since this description, like the whole book of Job, is so strongly Arabized, פחד, Job 40:17, will also be one word with the Arab. fachidh, the thigh; as the Arabic version also translates: ‛urûku afchâdhihi (the veins or strings of its thigh). The Targ., retaining the word of the text here, has פּחדין in Lev 21:20 for אשׁך, a testicle, prop. inguina, the groins; we interpret: the sinews of its thighs or legs are intertwined after the manner of intertwined vine branches, שׂריגים.
But why is פחדיו pointed thus, and not פחדיו (as e.g., שׁעריו)? It is either an Aramaizing (with אשׁריו it has another relationship) pointing of the plur., or rather, as Köhler has perceived, a regularly-pointed dual (like רגליו), from פּחדים (like פּעמים), which is equally suitable in connection with the signification femora as testiculi. מטיל, Job 40:18, is also Hebraeo-Arab.; for Arab. mṭl signifies to forge, or properly to extend by forging (hammering), and to lengthen, undoubtedly a secondary formation of טוּל, tâla, to be long, as makuna of kâna, madana of dâna, massara (to found a fortified city) of sâra, chiefly (if not always) by the intervention of such nouns as makân , medı̂ne , misr (= מצור), therefore in the present instance by the intervention of this metı̂l (= memtûl) whence probably μέταλλον (metal), properly iron in bars or rods, therefore metal in a wrought state, although not yet finished.
Its bones are like tubes of brass, its bones (גּרמיו, the more Aram. word) like forged rods of iron - what an appropriate description of the comparatively thin but firm as iron skeleton by which the plump mass of flesh of the gigantic boar-like grass-eater is carried!