Demonic · Deliverance tradition · c. 400 BCE
The Leviathan Spirit
Also called Spirit of Leviathan
Job's sea-beast read as a spirit of pride, and specifically of the twisting of words between people who are trying to understand each other.
Narrow source base
The teaching takes two details from Job 41 and builds on them: that Leviathan is 'king over all the children of pride', and that his scales are shut up together so close that no air can come between them. From the first comes pride; from the second, an impermeability to correction. The twisting of communication comes from Isaiah 27:1, where he is the 'crooked serpent' — read as a spirit that distorts what one person says on the way to another's hearing.
Job 41 is a speech about a creature God made and Job cannot master, delivered to establish that the world contains powers beyond human management. Reading it as a description of a spirit's tactics is a considerable distance from the passage's argument, and this is among the clearer cases in the tradition of a text being asked to carry a meaning it was not making.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
None. A category in modern deliverance teaching rather than a figure anyone has ever worshipped — these are diagnoses of a condition, and a diagnosis has no address.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon · c. 900–100 BCE
- Named there as
- Leviathan
- Rank
- Named Spirit
- Order
- Deliverance tradition
- Base of operations
- None. A category in modern deliverance teaching rather than a figure anyone has ever worshipped — these are diagnoses of a condition, and a diagnosis has no address.
- Era
- c. 400 BCE
- Traditions
- Christian, Deliverance & Spiritual Warfare
- Placed in
- The Deliverance Taxonomy
Traits
- Domain
- Pride, twisted communication, hardness against correction
- How firm the basis is
- Weak — a speech about a creature God made, read as a spirit's tactics
- Textual basis
- Job 41, Isaiah 27:1
- Status
- A category in modern deliverance teaching (1970s onward), not a figure of ancient demonology
Stats
Known connections
Identified with
3 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 3 offices attributed to The Leviathan Spirit, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- social1
- malefic2
1 claim
What is it blamed for?
Harms attributed to this figure by a named text. An attribution is not a diagnosis, and where a claim carries a grading it is about how well it rests on the passage it cites.
2 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names The Leviathan Spirit, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts spanning roughly 2,373 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as Leviathan, Spirit of Leviathan
- Rank: given as King over all the children of pride; Ruling spirit
A creature of overwhelming description — scales shut close together, breath kindling coals, the deep boiling like a pot — presented as beyond human mastery.
“He is a king over all the children of pride.”
Read as pride and as the twisting of communication, from the closed scales of Job 41 and the crooked serpent of Isaiah 27.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention The Leviathan Spirit?
Is The Leviathan Spirit the same as Leviathan?
What rank is The Leviathan Spirit?
How else is The Leviathan Spirit spelled?
What is The Leviathan Spirit said to do?
How old is The Leviathan Spirit?
Nearest in the corpus
If The Leviathan Spirit is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
The Korah Spirit
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
Deliverance teaching names this spirit for the Levite who told Moses the whole congregation was holy, so why did he exalt himself — and was swallowed by the ground.
The Jezebel Spirit
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
The most discussed figure in modern deliverance teaching, and a category rather than a being — built from a queen in Kings and a rival teacher in Revelation.
The Absalom Spirit
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
Named in deliverance teaching for the son who stood at the gate, listened sympathetically to everyone with a grievance, and stole the hearts of Israel.
The Ahab Spirit
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
The passive half of the pair — named for the king who let his queen act and then took the vineyard she obtained for him.
The Familiar Spirit
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
The biblical term for a medium's attending spirit — and at Endor, the one occasion where the practice is depicted as working.
The Lying Spirit
Named Spirit · Deliverance tradition
A spirit that volunteers to deceive, is asked how, explains, and is authorised — by God, in open council.
The books behind The Leviathan Spirit
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon
Various · c. 900–100 BCE · Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek
Read Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon in full ↗Cover: Public domain · see en:Aleppo Codex; scanned by · Wikimedia file page
Pigs in the Parlor: A Practical Guide to Deliverance
Frank and Ida Mae Hammond · 1973 · English
Read Pigs in the Parlor: A Practical Guide to Deliverance in full ↗
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.