Product placement, biblical style

This balance between the conflict and the no-conflict motifs is important. In terms of the way that the biblical material was compiled and organized into a canonical whole, the no-conflict Genesis 1 story is placed first and becomes the lens through which the other passages are to be understood. In other words, the primeval waters are a powerful and chaotic force in God’s creation but are only a bad thing when not constrained, when out of control. But God can command them and compel them to serve good purposes. Indeed, they praise God in their submission to his will. Leviathan, God’s ferocious pet, represents the forces of chaos woven into the very fabric of God’s good creation. These forces are dangerous to humans and beyond human control, but they are not beyond divine control.— The Biblical Cosmos, page 37