tanin · serpent, sea monster

What it means

tanin (תַּנִּין) is a Hebrew word of the Bible that means “serpent, sea monster”.

A large and imposing creature: depending on the passage, a great serpent, a crocodile, or a great sea creature. In Genesis 1 they are the great sea creatures, made by God like all the others.

How to say it

Approximate pronunciation. Vowels sound as in Spanish (a as in father, e as in bed, i as in machine, o as in note, u as in rule); the syllable in bold is stressed. The voice is your device's.

Its senses in the Bible

1. A wild dog that lives among ruins.
2. A huge beast of the sea.

From Brown-Driver-Briggs (1906)

How it is translated

The words this translation uses for it, most frequent first.

• jackals ×12
• sea monster ×5
• sea monsters ×3
• serpent ×3
• serpents ×2
• Dragon ×1

Related words

Words of the same family, by Strong’s numbering.

Where it appears

• Genesis×1
• Exodus×3
• Deuteronomy×1
• Nehemiah×1
• Job×2
• Psalms×4
• Isaiah×6
• Jeremiah×6
• Ezekiel×1
• Micah×1

• Genesis 1:21

  And Elohim created the great sea monsters and every living being that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And Elohim saw that it was good.

• Exodus 7:9

  “When Pharaoh speaks to you, saying, ‘Show a wonder for yourselves,’ then you shall say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it before Pharaoh; let it become a serpent.’”

• Exodus 7:10

  So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did so, as YHWH had commanded; Aaron threw his staff before Pharaoh and before his servants, and it became a serpent.

• Exodus 7:12

  Each man threw down his staff, and they became serpents; but the staff of Aaron swallowed their staffs.

• Deuteronomy 32:33

  The venom of serpents is their wine, and the cruel poison of vipers.

• Nehemiah 2:13

  And I went out by the Valley Gate at night, toward the Dragon Fountain and to the Dung Gate, and I was examining the walls of Jerusalem, which were full of breaches, and its gates, consumed by fire.

• Job 7:12

  Am I the sea, or a sea monster, that you set a guard over me?

• Job 30:29

  A brother I have become to jackals, and a companion to ostriches.

• Psalms 44:19

  though you have crushed us in the place of jackals and covered us with the shadow of death.

• Psalms 74:13

  You split the sea by your strength; you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters.

• Psalms 91:13

  On the fierce lion and the viper you will tread; you will trample the young lion and the serpent.

• Psalms 148:7

  Praise YHWH from the earth, sea monsters and all deeps,

• Isaiah 13:22

  And hyenas will howl in its palaces, and jackals in the palaces of delight; and its time is near to come, and its days will not be prolonged.

• Isaiah 27:1

  On that day YHWH will punish, with his sword —the hard, the great, and the strong— Leviathan the fleeing serpent, and Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will kill the sea monster that is in the sea.

• Isaiah 34:13

  And brambles will come up in its palaces, nettles and thistles in its fortresses; and it will be an abode of jackals, an enclosure for ostriches.

• Isaiah 35:7

  And the burning sand will become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; in the abode of jackals, its lair, grass will become reed and papyrus.

• Isaiah 43:20

  The animals of the field will honor me, jackals and ostriches, because I have given in the wilderness water, rivers in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen one.

• Isaiah 51:9

  Awake, awake, put on strength, arm of YHWH; awake as in the days of old, the generations of the ages. Are you not the one who cut to pieces Rahab, who pierced the sea monster?

• Jeremiah 9:11

  And I will make Jerusalem heaps, a lair of jackals, and the cities of Judah I will make a desolation, without inhabitant.”

• Jeremiah 10:22

  The sound of a report! Look, it comes, and a great commotion from the land of the north, to make the cities of Judah a desolation, a lair of jackals.

• Jeremiah 14:6

  And the wild donkeys stand on the bare heights; they pant for the wind like jackals; their eyes fail, for there is no grass.

• Jeremiah 49:33

  And Hazor will become a lair of jackals, a desolation forever; no one will dwell there, nor will a son of man reside in it.

• Jeremiah 51:34

  “He has devoured me, he has crushed me, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; he has set me down as an empty vessel; he has swallowed me like the sea monster; he has filled his belly with my delicacies; he has driven me out.

• Jeremiah 51:37

  And Babylon will become heaps, a lair of jackals, a horror and a hissing, without inhabitant.

• Ezekiel 29:3

  Speak and say, ‘Thus says Adonai YHWH: Look, I am against you, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great sea monster lying in the midst of his channels, who has said, “Mine is my Nile, and I made it for myself.”

• Micah 1:8

  Because of this I will lament and wail; I will go barefoot and naked; I will make a lament like the jackals, and mourning like the ostriches.