THE WHALE. 158

tations is a striking corroboration that the word which in
Genesis is translated “whales” included the whole of the
mammiferous inhabitants of the deep, for there it is rendered
“sea-monsters:” “even the sea-monsters draw out the breast,

_they give suck to their young.” In the history of Jonah,
again, it is not necessary to define the “ great fish” to be a
whale, for though in Matthew xii. 40 this word is substi-
tuted, it is not to be understood of any one fish, but as a
general name for all the larger inhabitants of the deep; and
the whale being unknown in the Mediterranean, seems to
set the question at rest.

The word “leviathan,” which occurs in Job xli., Isaiah
xxvii., and in Psalm lxxiv., was supposed by all the old com-
mentators to be the whale, but all modern critics have iden-
tified it with the crocodile: this change of opinion is sup-
ported with very strong arguments by Bochart, which will
be readily understood after reading the 41st chapter of Job,
the whole being devoted to a description of the animal
called Leviathan. In the first place the whale tribes do
not inhabit the Mediterranean, and though some species
have occasionally been found there, the great whale has pro-
bably never been seen in that locality. The description too,
which is sufficiently minute, does not apply: thus in the