The Leviathan — the great sea creature that God created on the fifth day — was so enormous that the sages struggled to find words adequate to describe it. The Talmud (Bava Batra 74a-75a) preserves one attempt, focusing on a detail that captures the creature's impossible scale: its eyes.
The Leviathan's eyes, the sages said, gave off such intense light that they illuminated the depths of the ocean. Sailors lost at sea could navigate by the glow that rose from below the waves — not sunlight filtering down, but the radiance of the creature's gaze filtering up. The eyes of the Leviathan were, in effect, underwater suns.
Rabba bar bar Hana, the great traveler and teller of wonders, reported seeing the Leviathan during one of his sea voyages. The creature was so vast that a fish three hundred parasangs long was merely a parasite in its gills. When the Leviathan was hungry, it breathed out heat from its mouth that made all the waters of the deep boil.
God created two Leviathans originally — male and female. But He realized that if they reproduced, their offspring would destroy the world. So He slew the female and preserved her flesh in salt for the great banquet that the righteous will enjoy in the World to Come.
The Leviathan's eyes represent something the sages understood intuitively: there are creatures in God's creation so vast, so powerful, so far beyond human comprehension that even describing their eyes requires the language of mythology. The Leviathan is not merely a big fish. It is a living testament to the infinity of the Creator who made it.