Behemoth

Behemoth (; Hebrew: בְּהֵמוֹת, bəhēmōṯ) is a beast from the biblical Book of Job, and is a form of the primeval chaos-monster created by God at the beginning of creation. Metaphorically, the name has come to be used for any extremely large or powerful entity.

Etymology The Hebrew word behemoth (Biblical Hebrew: בְ֭הֵמוֹת, romanized: bəhēmoṯ) has the same form as the plural of Biblical Hebrew: בְּהֵמָה, romanized: bəhēmā, lit. 'beast', suggesting an augmentative form meaning "great beast". Despite its plural form, it takes singulative adjectives, much like other pluralised augmentative forms such as Elohim "God". Some theorize that the word might originate from an Egyptian word of the form pꜣ jḥ mw "the water-ox", meaning "hippopotamus", altered by folk etymology in Hebrew to resemble bəhēmā. However, this phrase with this meaning is unattested at any stage of Egyptian. Even before the decipherment of Ancient Egyptian in the early 19th century, there was widespread identification of the biblical behemoth with the hippopotamus. The word for "hippopotamus" in Russian remains derivative of behemoth (бегемот), a meaning that entered the language in the mid-18th century.

Biblical...