Halakhah for Job 40:36

And now that I have explained all of this to you, you ought to meditate on the idea that if in this world you will find that things are so according to nature and their inherent virtues, how much the more so will it be the case at the end of time when nature will be made anew and be changed for the better to meet the needs of everything that has been created based on its status! And it goes without saying for the status of the people of Israel and the righteous among them, that the Holy One Blessed be He will make anew the kinds of pleasures and meals, just as He will make them a new creation, in whom the flow of intelligence and the capacity for prophecy has been strengthened. And if the heart of man who thinks he’s so smart objects to this idea, and says the words of the sages z”l are based on the pillars of science and the splendor of the intellect, and that all of them are in accordance with reason, and that they did not speak or say a word except by means of allegory, and the meal of the Leviathan is not physical but only an allegory for intellectual capacity and “the bundle of eternal life,” we will say to him in reply: we are compelled by necessity to believe that the words about a physical meal words refer literally to a physical meal, and not just an intellectual experience. For see what they said in the Perek Ha-Sefinah (“The Ship”):²²B. Baba Batra 75a. R. Yohanan said, The Holy One, blessed be He, will in time to come make a banquet for the righteous from the flesh of Leviathan; for it is said: “Companions will make a banquet of it [yikhru ‘alav habarim].”²³Job 40:30: literally, “Shall traders traffic in him?” (JSB). Kerah must mean a banquet; for it is said: “And he prepared [va-yikhreh] for them a great banquet [kerah] and they ate and drank.”²⁴2 Kg 6:23. “Companions” [habarim] must mean scholars for it is said: “the companions hearken for your voice; cause me to hear it.”²⁵Song of Songs 8:13. The rest [of Leviathan] will be distributed and sold out in the markets of Jerusalem; for it is said: “They will part him among the Kena’anim.”²⁶Job 40:30. R. Bahya omits the Talmud’s explanation of kena’anim: “Kena’anim must mean merchants, for it is said: “a trader [kena’an] with balances of deceit in his hand; he loves to oppress.’ (Hos 12:8) And if you wish, you may infer it from the following: ‘Whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers [kena’anim] are the honorable of the earth.'(Is 23:8)” b. Baba Batra 75a.

And you already knew that the words of our rabbis follow the Torah’s means of expression, and so in the Torah there are permitted and prohibited foods: this you shall eat; this you shall not eat, and it is written, “from their flesh you shall not eat.”²⁷Lev 11:8. You wouldn’t say that this is an allegory – God forbid! – but it’s the actual literal meaning. And so they went on to say The Holy One, blessed be He, will in time to come make a sukkah for the righteous from the skin of Leviathan; for it is said: “Can you fill sukkot with his skin?”²⁸Job 40:31. Sukkot here is spelled with a sin, not a samekh as in sukkah meaning “tent,” and means “darts.” Thus, the meaning of the verse in context is “Can you fill his skin with darts?” If a man is worthy, a sukkah is made for him; if he is not worthy, a shadow [tzel] is made for him, for it is said: “And his head with a fish covering [bi-tziltzel].”²⁹Job 30:41. R. Bahya following the Talmud takes the two parts of this verse in Job as contrasting: the first part hints at the reward of the worthy, the second part to the punishment of the unworthy – “shade.” After this he skips a few lines of Talmud that expand on this theme of the worthy and unworthy’s “rewards.” The rest [of Leviathan] will be spread by the Holy One, blessed be He, upon the walls of Jerusalem, and its splendor will shine from one end of the world to the other; as it is said: “And nations shall walk by Your light.”³⁰Is 60:3, in b. Baba Batra 75a.