Without a doubt, the lasting currency of the Old Testament myth of Leviathan and Behemoth is due, in large part, to its appearance in the state theory of Thomas Hobbes. In Jewish eschatology, the two monsters are conceived of as radically antagonistic: Behemoth, a male, controls the land, while the female Leviathan rules over the sea. Both monsters, intending to establish a reign of terror, struggle for dominance. They are then slain by God or—according to differing versions of the myth—kill each other. All accounts agree, however, that the monsters’ deaths will bring about the Day of Justice. Their story was popularized through Hobbes's treatises Leviathan or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil(1651) and Behemoth or the Long Parliament(1682). In his 1651 magnum opus, Hobbes describes an oppressive political system with only remnants of individual rights; the less well-known Behemoth, dating from the time of the English Civil War, deals with a chaotic non-state marked by utter anarchy. The absolute rule of Leviathan, in which traces of the rule of law and vestiges of individual rights are preserved, is distinct from that of Behemoth, which is marked by lawlessness and disorder (cf. Perels 2000, 361).

In older depictions, Behemoth often resembles an elephant, a hippopotamus or a water buffalo, while Leviathan is rendered as a serpent, a dragon or a crocodile (cf. Hirsch et al. 1904). Other scholars, thinking of the two imaginary creatures’ legendary size and power, have interpreted them as dinosaurs (cf. Lyons 2001, 1ff.). In Hobbes's Leviathan, these iconic traditions have been transmuted to form the famous “mortal god” depicted in the frontispiece: a giant human form made up of innumerable minuscule bodies, wielding sword and crosier as symbols of worldly and spiritual power (cf. Bittner/Thon 2006, 37ff.; Brandt 1982, 203ff.; Bredekamp 2006; Kersting 1992, 28ff.). By way of the biblical quotation placed above the princely figure (“Non est potestas Super Terram quae Comparetur ei. Iob.41.24.”), Hobbes refers explicitly to the Old Testament source of his Leviathan: the Book of Job, in which the power of the Leviathan is said to be unmatched by any other power on earth.