Table of Contents
The Book of Job in the Bible contains a reference to the “deep boiled like a pot” in chapter 41, verse 31. This verse appears in God’s description of Leviathan, a powerful sea creature, as part of a larger speech emphasizing divine control over creation (Job chapters 38 to 41).
In the English Standard Version (ESV), Job 41:31 states: “He makes the deep boil like a pot; he makes the sea like a pot of ointment.” The King James Version (KJV) renders it as: “He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment.”
The verse sits in a run of lines about Leviathan’s wake.
He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment. He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary.
Job 41:31-32, KJV (Hebrew 41:23-24), Project Gutenberg eBook #10, public domain
The ESV wording quoted above is from the English Standard Version, copyright Crossway, as published on esv.org (short excerpt for review and study).
The Hebrew words
The Hebrew text numbers the verse 41:23. It reads yartiach kassir metzulah, yam yasim kammerqachah. The BDB lexicon glosses metzulah as “depth, the deep, the deep sea,” and lists this verse among its uses. The second half compares the sea to a merqachah, which the KJV and ESV translate as “a pot of ointment.”
Rashi read both halves as pictures of stirring and mixing.
He makes the deep seethe like a pot Like a small bubbling pot, that quickly raises bubbles one after another, so does he cause the deep, which is large and deep, to seethe. he makes the sea like a seething mixture Like a mixture of a concoction of spices, which is compounded and mixed, so does he make and mix the sea when he moves from his place.
Rashi on Job 41:23, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, The Judaica Press Complete Tanach with Rashi, via Sefaria, CC-BY
In Rashi’s account, the boiling is the sea churned by the creature’s movement, not heat from below.
Lemuria?
The page title asks whether the verse points to Lemuria. The verse itself names no land, no sinking and no fire under the sea. Its subject is Leviathan, and the speech around it is God’s answer to Job from the whirlwind. Any link to a lost Pacific continent is a reading brought to the text, not a statement in it.
