Whale

The word "whale" in the King James Bible translates several distinct Hebrew terms, none of which necessarily refers to the cetacean mammal as the term is used in modern English. The Hebrew tan (plural tannin) appears in Job 7:12 ("Am I a sea, or a whale, that thou settest a watch over me?"), Ezekiel 29:3 (God addresses Pharaoh as "the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers"), and Jeremiah 51:34. In Genesis 1:21 the KJV renders tannin as "great whales" (the great sea creatures of creation). The great fish (dag gadol) that swallowed Jonah is specifically called a large fish in Hebrew (Jonah 1:17), though the Septuagint and Matthew 12:40 use ketos (a large sea creature or sea monster). The cumulative biblical picture is of powerful and terrifying creatures of the deep that serve as instruments of divine sovereignty — whether as symbols of chaos subdued by God in creation or as agents of his providential purposes.