Encountering the Word as Behemoth and Leviathan in the Whirlwind

Seyeom Kim

Introduction

Now, after seven years of great plenty, most South Korean Christian faith communities

are facing seven years of famine without theological preparation and homiletical reflection. The

2019 Annual General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Korea (PCK), which is the largest

denomination in South Korea, reported that membership in congregations had decreased 10.5%

since 2011, which was the highest-ever year for reported membership. Interestingly, the only

growing groups in congregations were pastors and elders.1 The same trends can be found within

sister denominations of the PCK. Since most South Korean theologians agree that preaching is

the most significant factor to contribute church growth in South Korea,2 even before the recent

precipitous decrease in congregations’ numbers multiple South Korean homileticians have been

anticipating this current situation and interrogating through self-criticism.

Chi Young Kay, a South Korean homiletician, reproached South Korean preaching for

colluding with the secular meaning of successful ministry, shamanism, and fundamentalism,

which is deeply related to biblical literalism.3 Also, Sung-Kuh Chung, a South Korean historian,

bitterly, criticized contemporary South Korean preaching for conspiring with materialism and

capitalism toward the numerical growth of individual churches so that most South Korean

preaching twists the true meaning of the Word and abandons its prophetic role in the church.

1 Data from the official website of Presbyterian Church of Korea, accessed November 1, 2019.
http://new.pck.or.kr/bbs/board.php?bo_table=SM01_05&wr_id=1
2 Chi Young Kay, “A Study of Contemporary Protestant Preaching in Korea: Its Exegesis, Hermeneutics, and
Theology,” Ph.D. Dissertation, (The School of Theology at Claremont, 1990), 3.
3 Ibid 3-9.

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This tendency thwarts the renewal of the church and preaching in South Korea.4 Upon these

self-reflections, South Korean homileticians have repented by rediscovering biblical preaching

through biblical criticism,5 proposing the preaching of transfiguration as an alternative to

contemporary South Korean homiletics,6 furthermore adapting the New Homiletic in the

postmodern South Korean context.7 This article is written for neither to retain numbers in

congregations nor to simply add more criticism of current South Korean homiletics’ issues;

rather, this article understands decreasing numbers of membership in South Korean churches as

an urgent calling for an alternative homiletics that liberates South Korean preaching from the

past’s glories. The aim of this article, therefore, is to retrieve the Word’s hidden character, which

not only disorients ossified thought patterns and practices but also reorients the ethic of

inbreaking God’s kingdom, in the South Korean context both within and beyond previous

academic endeavors of South Korean homileticians.

To summon the Word’s ignored and mysterious character, I examine the problems in

South Korean preaching through Eun Joo Kim’s profound and balanced reflections. Moreover, I

investigate the Word’s character and its telos through biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann,

feminist theologian Rebecca Chopp, and homiletician Charles L. Campbell, since Kim

understands the most pivotal problem of South Korean homiletics to be the preacher’s meager

4 Sung-Kuh Chung, A History of Preaching in Korean Church, (The Presbyterian General Assembly Theological
Seminary Press: Seoul, 1986), 395-397.
5 Chi Young Kay, “A Study of Contemporary Protestant Preaching in Korea: Its Exegesis, Hermeneutics, and
Theology,” 19-31.
6 Eun Joo Kim, “The Preaching of Transfiguration: Theology and Method of Eschatological Preaching from Paul
Lehmann’s Theological Perspective As an alternative to Contemporary Korean Preaching,” Ph.D. Dissertation,
(Princeton Seminary: New Jersey, 1996), 167-252.
7 Ung Joe Lee, “The New Homiletic: The Strategies for the Listener-Oriented Communication of The Gospel in the
Postmodern Korean Context,” Ph.D. Dissertation, (Fuller Theological Seminary: Pasadena, 2005), 197-222. See
also, Unyoung Kim, “A study of narrative preaching as a new preaching style; centering around the application in
the Korean church,” Th.M. Dissertation, (Columbia Theological Seminary: Decatur, 1994).

2
theological understanding of the Word. Based upon this examination, I will disclose the hidden

character of the Word through the particular biblical imagery of Behemoth and Leviathan in the

whirlwind who have transforming power. Finally, by uncovering the Word’s unseen character, I

will not only invite South Korean homiletics into Job’s whirlwind but also let them face divine

violence and promise, two concepts that, will disorient our current state of injustice as well as

open new life.

South Korean Preaching’s Context and its Problems

South Korean preaching is formed through intermingling its historical-political context

with its socio-economic and the cultural-religious contexts. Historically, Korea is situated among

three extremely powerful nations: China, Russia, and Japan. The Korean peninsula has not only

been attacked by these nations but has also became a battle-field for their hegemonic wars.

Moreover, from 1910 to 1945, Korea endured the rule of Japanese imperialism. Unfortunately, at

the end of colonization Korea was divided into North and South Korea by the Korean War. From

this traumatic history, most Koreans still have terrible memories and experiences passed down

through generations.8

After the Korean War, South Korea developed a distinctive socio-economic context

through the unprecedented rapid industrialization from the 1960s to 1990s. Although this

industrialization economically helped South Koreans to overcome difficulties from the Korean

War and colonization, the too-hasty developments caused unexpected side-effects such as

unequal distribution of profits causing the rise of social crime, urbanization with ethical chaos,

the loss of human dignity due to overpopulation, and ecological crisis. Also, South Korea has a

8 Eun Joo Kim, “The Preaching of Transfiguration: Theology and Method of Eschatological Preaching from Paul
Lehmann’s Theological Perspective As an alternative to Contemporary Korean Preaching,” 16-20.

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unique cultural-religious context that convoluted with Shamanism, Buddhism, and

Confucianism. South Korean society has been governed by shamanistic Buddhism and

shamanistic Confucianism religiously, culturally, and socially. 9 The above’s interwoven features

of context generated unique characters of South Korean Christian faith communities, such as

dependency upon spirits, obedience to authority, present-centered worldwide view, and

individual-centered wish-fulfillment.10 These features have uncritically bolstered South Korean

Christians’ fixed patterns of worship and preaching.

Based on the above understanding of the South Korean preaching context, Kim analyzes

South Korean preachers’ dilemma, which is not only complexed by its political, socio-economic,

and syncretistic religious context but also by preachers’ lack of theological and homiletical

foundations. Through the process of responding to this dilemma, South Korean preaching has

developed the individual-centered moral preaching, the experience-centered shamanistic

preaching, and the society-centered prophetic preaching.11 Without the proper foundation of

theological reflection, these three streams of preaching produced problems such as a dichotomy

between individual and public issues; a lack of ecclesiology; hierarchical understanding of

preaching; and inadequate delivery technics.

Based on the examination so far, Kim concluded that “the theological and homiletical

problems in the South Korean church are rooted in the absence of a proper understanding of

Christian gospel.” Without a profound theological basis, South Korean preaching has reiterated

conventional religious thoughts or ideas rather than creating a new meaning of life according to a

biblical vision of the kingdom of God, with power to transform the individual and the existing

9 Ibid, 43-44.
10 Ibid, 44.
11 Ibid, 51-80.

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social order and structure.12 And faith, indispensable to literalism, shifts from a relational to an

intellectual category. Faith no longer means trusting in God but instead believing the

unbelievable, so South Korean Christian communities have become more fixed with uncritical

pragmatism and hardened in old habits of worship and preaching. In this regard, I believe that

broadening understanding of the Word is the most urgent and significant call for the South

Korean homiletics. Through concepts of the Word articulated by Brueggemann, Chopp, and

Campbell, I will examine its meanings and implications for South Korean homiletics.

Grounding in the Word’s Character

First of all, Bruegemman suggests understanding the Word as poetry. By mentioning the

Word’s authentic character as poetry against a prose world,13 he argues that we should consider

“preaching as a poetic construal of an alternative world. The purpose of such preaching is to

cherish the truth, to open the truth from its pervasive reductionism in our society, to break the

fearful rationality that keeps the news from being new. ”14 Through this preaching, the Word

reveals its authentic character as “generative power to summon and evoke new life.” 15 However,

this preaching can be in danger when preachers are contaminated by ideologies:

When we embrace ideology uncritically, it is assumed that the Bible squares easily with
capitalist ideology, or narcissistic psychology, or revolutionary politics, or conformist
morality, or romantic liberalism. There is then no danger, no energy, no possibility, no
opening for newness!16

Hierarchy and authoritarianism, which are the backbone of most South Korean faith

communities, also need to be included in the above list of ideologies that can obscure the gospel.

12 Ibid, 85.
13 Walter Brueggemann, Finally Comes The Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation, (Fortress Press: Minneapolis,
1989), 3.
14 Ibid, 6.
15 Ibid, 4.
16 Ibid, 2.

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By cautioning against the uncritical embrace of ideologies, Brueggemann reveals the poetic

Word’s character as dangerous, energetic, and full of possibilities and newness. He keeps

asserting that the poetic Word has the evocative power to shatter fixed conclusions, and press us

always toward new, dangerous, and imaginative possibilities. 17 Moreover, he envisions “a new

home” as the telos of the poetic Word:

Where the poetry is sounded, the Prince knows a little of the territory has been lost to its
true Ruler. The newly claimed territory become a new home of freedom, justice, peace,
and abiding joy. This happens when the poet comes, when the poet speaks, when the
preacher comes as poet.18

Brueggemann’s concept of the poetic Word is helpful for dealing with the problems of South

Korean preaching since the poetic Word has generative power to break not only a fixed

dichotomy between personal and public issues but also the fossilized hierarchical understanding

of the authority of preaching through its imaginative and creative nature. Furthermore, it also

helps to overcome the absence of ecclesiology because the poetic Word calls for “a new home”

where provokes new humanity.19

Second, Chopp builds an idea of the Word as the perfectly open sign upon feminist

theology. After exploring feminist discourses about the Word of difference and solidarity, the

Word of song and wisdom, and the Word of transformation and creation, Chopp argues that the

Word can be the perfectly open sign when the Word speaks through women’s voices.20 She

elaborates on the meaning of the Word as the perfectly open sign in comparison with the Word of

order, which is a false word from hierarchy, dominance, and law:21

17 Ibid, 6.
18 Ibid, 11.
19 Ibid, 7.
20 Rebecca S. Chopp, The Power to Speak: Feminist, Language, God, (The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1989),
30-31.
21 Ibid, 27-29.

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 As the perfectly open sign we may say what the Word is, in our best approximation, but
also how it sustains the process of speaking. Here the Word is not that which breaks into
discourse, or one that governs it, rather it is the fully inclusivity of discourse; it creates
and restores speech, it both allows symbols to have meaning and pushes against any
fixed meaning.22

This Word as the perfectly opens signs operate in a distinctively feminist way through the logic

of abduction, which signifies what may be rather than what is absolute, and this is guided by the

play of aesthetic, the imagination of human flourishing, which relate to rhetorical practice of

emancipatory transformation.23 Interestingly, this emancipatory transformation is toward a

community of poets which is the telos of the Word as the perfectly open sign:

By weaving together the ambiguity of desire for community in modern theology and the
Word as open sign and the marginality of women-church, it is possible to reconstruct the
church as the community of emancipatory transformation in three steps. The first step
calls for a new poetics of community in the proclamation of emancipatory
transformation. . . In this second step, the modern church as the cult of individuals and
the cult of institutions is replaced by the intersubjectivity of community in women-
church . . . The poetics and rhetorics of community led, in the third step, to a
reconstruction of Christian piety.24

Chopp’s concept of the Word as the perfectly open sign is beneficial to South Korean homiletics

because this Word’s radical significations heading to freedom and transformation disorient

biblical literalism and authoritarianism. Also, since her concept of the Word is toward emerging

through revolution, especially for marginalized women, it can help dismantle South Korean

preaching’s rigidified hierarchical understanding of authority. Moreover, South Korean

preaching’s absence of ecclesiology will be filled with the telos of the Word as the perfectly open

sign by a new poetics of community, which is a community of emancipatory transformation.

Lastly, Campbell understands the gospel (the Word)25 As the identity of Jesus Christ.

22 Ibid, 31.
23 Ibid, 37-39.
24 Ibid, 73-74.
25 Distinguishing the meanings of “the Word” and “the gospel" can be profound work for revealing various

7
Pointing out serious limitations of the New homiletic movement, Campbell cultivated an

alternative wave of homiletics to provide “enrichment” for pulpits and the “renewal of the

church” based on Hans Frei’s postliberal theology. 26 By fostering Frei’s concept of the

“ascriptive logic” of Scripture, Campbell looks for the identity of Jesus: “This concern for the

unique ascriptive subject, Jesus of Nazareth, is precisely the issue at stake in Frei’s rather

enigmatic discussion of the priority of ‘identity over presence’ in The identity of Jesus Christ.”27

He continues: “The significant thing for the preacher is not Jesus as a model preacher, but rather

the identity of Jesus rendered in the gospel, which provides the pattern for the life of

discipleship.”28 By connecting the identity of Jesus Christ and the form for the life of

discipleship, Campbell envisions building up the church nurtured by the Word:

As a performance of Scripture, preaching helps to form the church’s life after the pattern
of Jesus' identity; it seeks to build up the church to enact publicly the way of peace in and
for the world . . . Preaching is a strange, risky way for the church to spread the gospel and
nurture people in the way of Jesus; it is countercultural practice in a world in which
attempts to control and manipulate the future through violence often rule the day.29

Therefore, the gospel as the identity of Jesus Christ not only builds up the church but also

nurtures believers in that language usage. Although it might seem to be unreasonable to pair the

Word and the gospel, the telos of the gospel to build up the church combines Brueggemann’s

telos of claiming a new home and Chopp’s telos of reconstructing a community of poets.

Campbell’s understanding of the gospel as the identity of Jesus Christ can be a significant

theological implications. Yet, in this article, I tried to understand the Word and gospel at a similar level since this
article's aim is to retrieve the Word's and the gospel's hidden character. For me, this means the Word can be
understood as broadening the meaning of God's revelation and the gospel as the good news that is manifested by the
incarnation of God's Word into a concrete context.
26 Charles L. Campbell, Preaching Jesus: The New Directions for Homiletics in Hans Frei’s Postliberal Theology,
(Wipf and Stock Publishers: Oregon, 1997), xiii
27 Ibid, 40.
28 Ibid, 212.
29 Ibid, 217.

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antidote for the "absence of ecclesiology" in South Korean homiletics. Since his understanding

of the gospel (the Word) is aimed solely at the church, the South Korean churches can be

reconstructed and nurtured by the pattern of Jesus’s identity through preacher’s reoriented

preaching, not by the materialism or capitalism.

The Word reveals its authentic character as poetry, the perfectly open sign, and the

identity of Jesus Christ, all of which disrupts and transforms the status quo for the sake of

building up the church as a new home and a community of transformation. Within and beyond

these understandings of the Word and its teloses, I will disclose a biblical model of the Word as

Behemoth and Leviathan in the whirlwind, which vividly uncovers the Word’s mysterious, wild,

and even monstrous character that disorients preaching from its past glories and reorients it

toward the unprecedented ethic of God’s kingdom.

A Biblical Model for the Word’s Mysterious Character

To encounter God’s wondrous creatures, the biblical studies and mystical

understandings are both needed, since they will help not only overcome misconceptions of

Behemoth and Leviathan as evil agents or earthly animals but also reveal the authentic identity

of Behemoth and Leviathan as the Word’s mysterious character that dismantles previous thought

patterns and practices and envisions a new ethic of God’s kingdom. This research is necessary

because it debunks not only our misconceptions toward God’s chaotic creatures but also the

limited understandings of the Word, which have impeded God’s unlimited possibilities to create

new life.

The name “Leviathan” originated from the Hebrew word root lwy and expresses “one

that twists/curls up.” In the Old Testament, Leviathan is understood as a serpentine marine

9
creature and a sea-monster.30 Mythologically, according to 1 En. 60:7f., “Leviathan is a female

monster that dwells on the floor of the upper sea. Behemoth is her masculine counterpart, living

in the desert.”31 Moreover, according to rabbinic resources, "Leviathan was created on the fifth

day both male and female. But since this pair could destroy the entire world, God slew the

female Leviathan and castrated male."32 Described as gigantic, capable of drinking six months

of Jordan River's flow, Behemoth is portrayed largely in terms of strength that cannot be

defeated by humans.33

Christian scholars have, interestingly, made an effort to prove that Behemoth and

Leviathan are ordinary animals such as a hippopotamus and a crocodile. Some ancient Jewish

interpreters understood Behemoth as the wild ox, while other Jewish commentators understood

Behemoth as an elephant, and some Christians (mainly Aquinas) held a similar view. A few

modern interpreters offer the possibility that Behemoth is a water buffalo.34 David J. A. Clines,

in his commentary regarding the book of Job, argues more concretely that Behemoth is a

hippopotamus and Leviathan is a crocodile:

There is now evidence of the presence of hippopotami in Palestine, from the twelfth to
the fourth centuries BCE... Crocodiles were also known not only in the Nile but also on
the Mediterranean coast of Palestine... Most scholars today, have no doubt that Behemoth
and Leviathan are real creatures, though the descriptions are of course literary and not
necessarily realistic, perhaps not entirely accurate. 35

Clines spilled too much ink on proving Behemoth and Leviathan as actual animals; in doing so,

he flattened these wondrous creatures’ divine characters down into earthly animals. In response,

30 Edited by Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browning, Bernd Janowski, and Eberhard Jungel, Religion Past & Present;
Encyclopedia of Theology and Religion, (Brill: Boston, 2010), 440.
31 Ibid, 441.
32 Ibid, 441.
33 Edited by Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Jewish Study Bible; Second Edition, (Oxford University Press:
New York, 2014), 1553.
34 Choon Leong Seow, The Spectacularity of Behemoth, 4.
35 Ibid, 1185.

10
Choon Leong Seow strongly contradicts these ideas that Behemoth and Leviathan are actual

animals:

While some large animals from the natural world might have served as a model for the
zoological taxonomy, the same is true with the description of Leviathan; even though the
crocodile may have been the poet’s reference to some extent(see Job 40:15-23), many
details of the beast do not suit the crocodile(see Job 41:10-13; 18-21).36

Bible verses in the Psalms, the book of Isaiah, and especially the book of Job support Seow’s

position by showing that Behemoth and Leviathan are divine creatures that surpass earthly

animals, which were classified by humans’ taxonomy.

In the Book of Isaiah 27:1, Leviathan was described as a sea monster that will be slain

by God. This image of Leviathan as an evil force might be derived from the Canaanite

mythology, in which “it is the god Baal who defeats them[Leviathan]; in the Bible, the Lord." 37

Through this image of chaotic power, Leviathan’s relationship to God showed that “God is not

only the ruler of the nations but also all the destructive forces of nature.”38 The Book of Isaiah

understands Leviathan as a metaphor for power that is opposite to God in the age of Isaiah. The

African Bible Commentary bolsters the same idea:

Leviathan is the great monster of the sea that is mentioned in the mythology of a number
of countries in the ancient Near East. It seems that here Isaiah uses it as an image that his
readers would know to represent God’s victory over the forces of evil that oppose him
(see also Gen 3:1-6; Rev 12-7-9).

Maybe Isaiah, as well as the readers of Isaiah's era, had a limited understanding of Leviathan as

an evil power, which was a superficial image of chaos that originated from the mythologies of

the Near East. Yet, the Book of Psalms (104:26) and Job (40:15-41:34) represent Behemoth and

Leviathan as divine chaotic creatures that were also created by God, and these creatures as

36 Choon Leong Seow, The Spectacularity of Behemoth, 5.

37 Edited by Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Jewish Study Bible; Second Edition, 817.
38 General Editor; Brian Wintle, South Asia Bible Commentary, (Open Door Publications: Rajasthan, 2015), 869.

11
characterized as untamed and undefeated by human beings. In Psalm 104:26, Leviathan is

described as a playmate of God. William P. Brown animates the picture of this frolicking

between God and Leviathan:

What the psalmist has done through the power of poetry is take a thing of abject terror
and turn into an object of playful wonder. In the poet's hands, Leviathan the monster of
the deep becomes Leviathan God's partner in play! Just imagine God and Leviathan
frolicking together in the ocean. Still, I for one would want to keep my distance. 39

Also, Ugaritic literature of mythology also helps us to depict this playful chaotic creature:

“Leviathan (Lotan) was also a ‘beloved’” of the deity El, a plaything, and that idea may be

reflected here”40 in Psalm 104:26. Leslie C. Allen broadens our limited understanding of nature

fully known and merely for humans by pointing to ocean, which is unexplored by humans: “And

such is the diverse wisdom of God that the sea exists not only for serious human pursuits bur for

Leviathan’s Frolics.”41 Hence, Psalm 104:26 testifies that Leviathan is not a dangerous and

chaotic sea-monster; instead, it is both a playmate of God and is not an evil force that opposites

God’s sovereignty.

Beyond arguing between dichotomous understandings of Behemoth as either an actual

animal (such as a hippopotamus) or a mythical creature, the Hebrew scripture by itself reveals its

wondrous distinctions. God wondrously created Behemoth as a herbivore (40:15), with a

monstrous appearance (40:16-18), as God’s foremost creature over human beings (40:19), as a

creature living in morass (40:20-22), as a calm and still being in chaotic conditions (40:23), and

as an untamed creature (40:24). Interestingly, it is hard to find any evil and dangerous aspects of

39 William P. Brown, Sacred Sense; Discovering the Wonder of God’s Word and World, (William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company: Michigan, 2015), 67.
40 Edited by Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Jewish Study Bible; Second Edition, 1384.
41 Leslie C. Allen, Word Biblical Commentary; Volume 2, Psalms 101-50, revised, (Thomas Nelson: Nashville,
2002), 47.

12
Behemoth in these verses. Clines’s analysis states: “In the context of the Book of Job, it would

be wrong to say that Behemoth and Leviathan have no symbolic value, but it is not as

representations of evil or of danger to the divinely established orders.” 42 Through exegesis and

comparison with the ancient East Asian inscriptions and images, Seow vitalizes Behemoth in this

new way:

Instead, it is the terrifyingly potent Behemoth, who is exalted as a representation of

divine-royal power over the cosmos. It is this Behemoth who receives divine protection
in the morass of uncertainty. It is the creature who is a spectacle not only of divine justice
but who shows Job up as a creature of patience and confidence amid the treat of
overwhelming chaos.43

Behemoth is a giant beast, yet not harmful, and it is not identified with a particular specimen,

such as a hippopotamus. This wondrous creature, as God’s beloved and foremost being, stands

still amid chaos. And the Behemoth’s tranquility in the middle of fluctuating conditions is not

only what human beings do not only what human beings do not inherit but is also the reason why

God summoned Behemoth before Job and us.

Astonishingly, the whole chapter of Job 41 dedicated to depicting God’s creature of

second-most priority, Leviathan. The verses of Job 40:1-4 dare us to tame this untamable

creature, and the verses 5-6 teach us that Leviathan is not a plaything and merchandise for

human beings. Verses 7-11 show that the undefeated power of Leviathan, and the following

verses 12-32 describe the monstrous appearances, including its outer garment (13), its mouth

with fearsome teeth (14), its back made of shield in rows (15-17), its dread eyes (18), and its

sparking smoking nostrils and mouth (19-20). The South Asian Bible Commentary portrays

Leviathan’s monstrous features in this way:

Its powerful neck can shake and kill even large prey, making it an object of dismay (22).

42 David J. A. Clines, Word Biblical Commentary; Volume 18B, Job38-42, 1186.

43 Choon Leong Seow, The Spectacularity of Behemoth, 33.

13
 Nothing can penetrate its tough skin, and even they might run in terror before it (25-30).
Its thrashing makes the water boil and foam (31-32). Leviathan is the mightiest creature
on earth and so is completely fearless (33-34)44

By analyzing this whole chapter, we can acknowledge that Leviathan is indeed a supernatural

being beyond ordinary animals like crocodiles. Leviathan’s armors cannot be defeated by any

weapons made of bronze or iron, so we quickly grasp the undefeated and the undefeatable nature

of Leviathan. Again, no evil or demonic powers of Leviathan can be found in the text.

Like the unseen character of the Word, Behemoth's and Leviathan's appearances and

powers cannot be described by limited human languages. Furthermore, the creatures untamed

and undefeated power cannot be encompassed by human sciences and knowledge. Ancient

people, including the Ugarit and Jewish people, failed to describe Behemoth and Leviathan

accurately with the language and science available to them, so they created superfluous

controversies. Even the honorable prophet Isaiah had limited understandings (Isaiah 27:1) of

these creatures and so made his readers, including us, confused. Yet, even we have misconstrued

the Word’s character, just as we have misconstrued these divine creatures, Behemoth would

calmly pluck grass next to the raging river (Job 40:15-23) and Leviathan would look down (Job

41:34) and laugh at us (Job 41:29-30) by boasting its cruel and merciless teeth and jaw (Job

41:14).

Homiletical Implications from Job’s Encounter with Behemoth and Leviathan

Through his encounter with Behemoth and Leviathan, not only are Job's former

understandings of God, life, and ethics disoriented, but also Job's unprecedented ethic of God's

kingdom begins to rule over Job and his community. After this encounter, Job starts to pray for

44 General Editor; Brian Wintle, South Asia Bible Commentary, 610.

14
his friends and comforts community (Job 42:10-11). Job records not the names of his seven sons

but instead his three daughters' names, “Jemimah, Keziah, and Keren-Happuch,” and he grants

his daughters an inheritance along with their brothers (Job 42:13-17). After encountering God’s

chaotic creatures, Job’s ethical attention shifts from individual concern to the community

concern. David Hankins notices Job’s ethical transition from individual to community: “the most

significant ethical aspect of the prose conclusion is its shift of focus from a subject-centered

concern with Job’s understanding, activities, and obedience, to Job’s role in what constitutes and

maintains the cultural, legal, and religious institutions of the community.” 45 The unprecedented

ethic of God’s kingdom prevails in Job and his community after encountering God's chaotic

creatures in the whirlwind. Brown understands Job’s encounter and its outcome in this way:

God has found a place for Job in the wild, not for Job to live out in the wilderness but for
Job to make a place for the wild back home. He comes back transformed, a bit of wild
man himself . . . Having encountered firsthand the God of the wild, Job is released from
the prison house of moralism and patriarchal convention, freed from the shackles of
honor and shame, freed from himself as profiled in the prologue. He is an outsider who
returns to be an insider transformed and ready to transform.46

As Job’s encounter with the God of the wild disorients his shackles of conventional thought and

tradition, God wants to invite not only South Korean preachers but also all preachers into the

whirlwind. This whirlwind might seem to be uncertain and chaotic, yet it is the only place for

preachers’ certainties to be shattered in order to dream new possibilities. Also, God would

introduce Behemoth and Leviathan to preachers, since God wants to destroy our world’s ossified

and fossilized thoughts patterns and practices. The Word, which like Behemoth and Leviathan is

only tamed by God, not by preachers, can build up the church as the identity of Jesus Christ not

45 Davis Hankins, The Book of Job and the Immanent Genesis of Transcendence, (Northwestern University Press:
Illinois, 2015), 223.
46 William P. Brown, Sacred Sense, 77.

15
only “a new home” founded by the poetry of the Word but also “a community of transformation”

constructed by the Word as the perfectly open sign.

Allen Boesak’s preaching pierces my heart when he says that our goal as the church is:

To restlessly seek that recklessness which will challenge, and to seek to change human
history until it conforms to the norms of the kingdom of God. And remember, says Kay
Munk, "the signs of the Christian church have always been the lion, the lamb, the dove,
and the fish. But never the chameleon." And remember, too: the church is the chosen
people of God. But the chosen shall be known by their choices.47

If Job nudged Kay Munk, he might have added Behemoth and Leviathan in his list of the signs

of the church. Without the experience of a fearful encounter with God’s chaotic creatures in the

whirlwind, preachers and churches are continuously tempted to become chameleons that have

been characterized by their completely unbothersome, insidiously negotiable, and vividly

entertaining words that keep imprisoning the Word’s wild character and its provocative telos.

Then, how can South Korean preachers be invited into the whirlwind, which makes the certain

uncertain? Entering into the whirlwind begins with preachers’ admitting that preaching’s telos is

as death.

This admitting that preaching must meet its Maker, proposed by Jacob D. Myers,

troubles the basic elements of preaching–“language, the preacher, scripture, and God”–and

complicates the South Korean preaching context,48 which is inevitably biased by a multilayered

context. Through the death of preaching, a vital secret is exposed:

Preaching is a summons to die. It is here, at this moment of undecidability, at this

moment between a monstrous possibility and a divine impossibility, that preaching
exposes itself to the secret, which is to say, the Word of God. It is only into and out of
death that the secret may be heard . . . Preaching into death provides the ultimate test of
our faithfulness, "hoping beyond hope" for God to intervene in a miraculous way. 49

47 Allan Boesak, "The Reuben Option," in A Chorus of Witnesses: Model Sermons for Today's Preacher, Thomas G.
Long, and Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., editors. (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: Michigan, 1994), 138.
48 Jacob D. Meyers, Preaching Must Die!: Troubling Homiletical Theology, (Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 2017), 4.
49 Ibid, 5-6.

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Through the understanding of preaching’s death, Myers tried to decenter “those naturalized and

reified notions of preaching that bolster a certain Western, modernist, theological hegemony: in

short, to help homiletics (re)orient itself as troubling for preaching.” 50 Through this shift from

keeping “preaching alive to helping to die a good death,”51 preachers can understand the

whirlwind as a chaotic place where not only does their past world continue to be disoriented but

also unseen possibilities continue to arise:52

The Word of God, if such a thing exists, is spooking preaching. It inhabits and haunts
preaching, troubling our kerygmatic foundations, calling preaching to a kind of death.
That should be our aim when we preach: to give up and give in to the (holy) ghost, to
allow a homiletical hauntology to do its work against our various homiletical ontologies
(e.g., preaching is teaching; preaching is practical wisdom).53

Acknowledging the destination of preaching as death is the moment of entering into the

whirlwind, which deconstructs former foundational illusions. In this homiletical whirlwind,

preachers will be spooked by the unexpected Word just as they would be intimated by Behemoth

and Leviathan. Through his encounter with Behemoth and Leviathan, Job’s frustrations

disappear since God re-creates hopes and promises from the midst of uncertainty and chaos. For

South Korean preachers, admitting the death of preaching is likewise significant since it helps to

confess the death not only of past preaching’s glory but also of fixed preaching habits. By

sentencing preaching to death, South Korean preachers will summon the true meaning of the

Word and avoid meaningless debates derived from different denominational, theological, and

political interests.

As Job’s encounter with Behemoth and Leviathan was much more powerful than his

50 Ibid, 4.
51 Ibid, 16.
52 Ibid, 175.
53 Ibid, 177.

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conversations with his friends, preachers’ encounter with the Word, like Job’s encounter with

Behemoth and Leviathan, may allow them to face “divine violence,” which has the power to

disorient to present a “promise” of an unseen future. Divine violence is a term described by

Walter Benjamin, and it refers to the destruction of “systems of relations that include structures

of legitimation and principalities and powers, not the flesh-and-blood bodies that create and

inhabit them.”54 I understand the Word as Behemoth and Leviathan in terms of “divine

violence” because the encounter with Behemoth and Leviathan disorients the Job’s former

theological and ethical systems of understanding. Ted A. Smith introduces divine violence in this

way; Divine violence is:

not to press theology into service as a justification for action but to open a gap of
incommensurability between the law that would justify or condemn an action and the
action itself . . . Divine violence offers not legitimation but renewed occasions for
responsibility . . . Divine violence forces free action. It demands responsibility. 55

Just as, Job's former logic of life is disoriented by his encounter with Behemoth and Leviathan,

divine violence as the character of Word boundlessly deconstructs our fossilized theologies and

traditions that tend to make laws that can become bloody threats. Divine violence is a character

of the Word that South Korean preachers should understand in order to overcome

dichotomous thought patterns between personal and public issues, sacred and secular spaces, and

hierarchical and authoritative speeches.

As Job’s encounter with Behemoth and Leviathan not only disorients Job’s past life but

also opens a new ethic of life, divine violence invites preachers into a promise which “offers a core

54 Ted A. Smith, Weird John Brown; Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics, (Stanford University Press:
California, 2015), 74.
55 Ibid, 75.

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sense of what the gospel is concerning context.” 56 An understanding this promise in the

relationship with its profound cultural sensibility is essential since this promise is neither the

universal future nor the panacea for problems in each context. David Schnasa Jacobsen writes:

It [promise] may awaken faith and hope, but it is also just as like to awaken profound
dissatisfaction with the status quo and unjust ordering of reality. For this reason, it
cannot be only one more formula, one more catchphrase, and certainly no one-size-fits-
all gospel solution for cultural traditions.57

In a revisionist reading of Luther’s understanding of promise, Jacobsen argues for, “promise as

toward an unfinished homiletical theology of grace and justice.”58 This understanding of the

gospel is significant for South Korean preaching because not only is South Korean preaching's

context is still complicated, but also many South Korean preachers exist who divide grace and

justice sharply. Since South Korean preaching has been caught in a trap of dichotomy between

grace and justice,59 now is the right time to retrieve its right relationship by rediscovering a

missing part: lament.

As Kim concluded, the root of South Korean preaching’s problem is its lack of

theological reflections and understanding of the gospel; through the lament in the face of

suffering (Anfechtung), South Korean preachers can have a chance to undertake into theological

reflection genuinely.60 Most of all, the Word as promise envision an ethic of God's kingdom in

each particular context with current issues. Jacobsen writes:

Promise provoke both reflection and action, while reflection and action return preachers
(and hearers) to promise as theologians . . . At the moment, such contextual dialogue

56 David Schnasa Jacobsen, “Introduction,” in Toward a Homiletical Theology of Promise, David Schnasa Jacobsen,
editor, (Cascade Books: Eugene, 2018), 1.
57 Ibid, 2.
58 David Schnasa Jacobsen, “Promise as an Event of the Gospel in Context,” in Toward a Homiletical Theology of
Promise, David Schnasa Jacobsen, editor, (Cascade Books: Eugene, 2018), 106.
59 Eun Joo Kim, “The Preaching of Transfiguration: Theology and Method of Eschatological Preaching from Paul
Lehmann’s Theological Perspective As an alternative to Contemporary Korean Preaching,” 81-82.
60 David Schnasa Jacobsen, “Promise as an Event of the Gospel in Context,” in Toward a Homiletical Theology of
Promise, David Schnasa Jacobsen, editor, 106.

19
 becomes the space where the character of the gospel as promise bumps up against
realities which alternately sponsor profound trust, sometime fist-shaking lament, and in
bits and pieces faithful/hopeful praxis even now.

As Job's encountering with Behemoth and Leviathan not only disorients his former theology but

also reorients him to a new ethic of God’s kingdom, South Korean preachers’ encounter with the

Word as divine violence will deconstruct former conventional theologies and homiletics. The

Word as promise will envision new possibilities within a unique and complicated South Korean

context.

Conclusion

South Korean Christian faith communities know the transforming Word of God. It has

been pivotal to their survival and preaching, particularly in ministry with people severely

traumatized by their experiences of the Korean War. However, after 1953, transformation

became linked with individual security. Preaching was based on prosperity theology that

emphasized personal piety and evangelism. Biblical literalism, authoritarianism, pragmatism,

and a lack of concern for ethics also characterized this homiletic. Most of all, these tendencies

are derived from the inadequate theological understanding of the Word. It is time to invite the

South Korean preacher into the whirlwind, where the Word's transforming character can be

revitalized again to envision the ethic of God’s inbreaking kingdom in the South Korean

preaching context.

Preaching needs to summon divine violence and promise into the unbreakable chains of

unjust structures and systems. Through the proclaimed Word as divine violence and promise, the

undefeated world of injustice will be disoriented and reoriented toward a new heaven and new

earth (Rev. 21:1). Until God’s kingdom comes, God will unceasingly invite preachers into the

whirlwind, where preachers’ former certainties become uncertainties, which creates new

20
promises. Through reoriented preachers and their transformed preaching, South Korean Christian

faith communities will witness a God who keeps creating the kingdom of God where Behemoth

and Leviathan not only break principalities and powers but also frolic with God. So, I eagerly

long for God to invite South Korean preachers into the whirlwind in which they will encounter

Behemoth and Leviathan; there, the Word as divine violence shall disorient, deconstruct, and

decenters the act of preaching in the midst of our unjust world, and the Word as promise shall

reorients, re-establishes, and envisions the ethic of God’s inbreaking kingdom in the South

Korean preaching context.

21
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