1 In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
Leviathan may have been the Short-Necked Plesiosaur. We don’t really know for sure which “sea monster” was meant in the Bible by the term.
The word translated in the King James here as “dragon” in the original Hebrew meant, uhhh, “dragon.” The modern translations use the word “jackal” whenever they can (of course in this scripture they can’t because jackals don’t live in the sea.) This is because of a bias to not believe humans lived with dinosaurs and that dragons were mythical; Old Earth philosophy.
There is a multitude of evidences for dragons/dinosaurs actually living with humans, eating them, being hunted by them, etc. Dragons are portrayed in art and stories from around the world as the same category as deer, elephants, lions, etc. How about a cave painting of a large T-res type dinosaur fighting an elephant, with the elephant’s trunk torn off and bleeding all over the place! This is found in caves in Europe.
In the Middle Ages it was believed, (largely because the printing press hadn’t been invented yet so people couldn’t look it up for themselves), that God would never let any species go extinct. So when dragons went extinct and everyone who had actually seen them had died, it began to be assumed they must have only been legendary.
In the late 1800’s when dragon fossils were discovered by those wishing to find evidence of evolution, they never even considered that they might be something we already knew about, but named their new find “dinosaurs” and invented “The Age of the Dinosaur” in order to support their preconceived beliefs of an old earth.
The fact is that, as far as is possible to tell from fossils, the art and legends of dragons fit exactly with what we find in dinosaurs.
For example, by following Native American legends about the “flying dragons” from pre- European days, Paleontologists have found large nesting colonies of Pterodactyls. Since these same natives had strong taboos about being anywhere near bones, it is highly unlikely their legends came from finding the fossils and inventing stories, but from their ancestor’s actual experiences and observations of these flying dragons.
So this verse is in fact telling us about large sea dragons/”dinosaurs”
(Technically, by definition, a dinosaur is a land animal. A large reptile in the sea is a, well, “sea reptile,” while a flying reptile is a “flying reptile.” However, in common usage, we use the term “dinosaur” for all three categories of large reptiles [land, sea, and air] while our ancestors used the term “dragon” for all three.)
This verse is about how God is going to let "the dragon in the sea, leviathon" be hunted. Why? I don’t know. This may be symbolic of Him letting Babylon fall. Or maybe the kingdom of Tyre, since they were the first, best sea traders.
2 In that day sing ye unto her,
When you come back to Judah, sing this song:
A vineyard of red wine.
3 I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.
Israel/Judah are God's people and He will watch over and protect those that choose to follow Him, even while they are in captivity.
4 Fury is not in Me:
God's not mad anymore, once the Jews have been punished by the Assyrians and Babylonians.
…who would set the briers and thorns against Me in battle? I would go through them, I would burn them together.
God will protect them from further invaders.
5 Or let him take hold of My strength, that he may make peace with Me; and he shall make peace with Me.
6 He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit.
God will restore the decedents of Jacob. He will keep their land beautiful.
7 Hath He smitten him, as He smote those that smote him? Or is he slain according to the slaughter of them that are slain by Him?
God has been/ will be much harder on the unbelieving nations than He has been on Israel.
8 In measure, when it shooteth forth, thou wilt debate with it: He stayeth His rough wind in the day of the east wind.
9 By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin; when he maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up.
God allowed this conquest to come on the Jews to cleanse them from their idolatry.
10 Yet the defensed city shall be desolate, and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness: there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof.
The major cities of Judah will become overgrown so much animals will graze down the city streets.
11 When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off: the women come, and set them on fire: for it is a people of no understanding: therefore He that made them will not have mercy on them, and He that formed them will shew them no favor.
Israel/Judah have been as stupid as firewood. God will not be gentle.
12 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel.
But God will gather them together again, like someone harvesting grain. He will gather them from the Euphrates to the border of Egypt. (The “Stream of Egypt” was not the Nile. It was a much smaller river to the north-east that marked their border.)
13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the Lord in the holy mount at Jerusalem.
God will bring Israel/Judah back from captivity and restore them.