Astronomy (continued) – Astronomy (continued)

Astronomy (continued)

But two other ideas are also strongly dwelt upon; the stars and the heaven of which they form the "host" are used to express the superlatives of number and of height. "Look now toward heaven, and number the stars, if thou be able to number them" (Genesis 15:5); "As the host of heaven cannot be numbered" (Jeremiah 33:22) are a few of the passages in which the stars are used for limitless number. Those separately visible to the naked eye at any one time do not exceed 2,000 in number, but it was just as evident to the Hebrews of old, as it was to Ptolemy, the astronomer of Alexandria, that beside the stars separately visible, there is a background, a patterned curtain of light, which indicates by its granular and mottled appearance that it is made up of countless myriads of stars, too faint to be individually detected, too close to be individually defined. The most striking feature of this curtain is the grand stellar stream that we call the Milky Way, but the mind easily recognizes that the minute points of light, composing its pattern, are as really stars as the great leaders of the constellations. Later astronomy has confirmed the testimony of the prophets that the stars are without number. The earliest star catalogue, that of Hipparchus, contained a little over one thousand stars; the great International Photographic Chart will show the images of more than fifty millions, and there are photographs which show more than a hundred thousand stars on a single plate. The limit that has been reached is due only to the limited power of our telescopes or the limited time of exposure of the photographs, not to any limitation in the number of stars. To us today, as to the Psalmist of old, it is a token of the infinite power and knowledge of God that "He telleth the number of the stars; He giveth them all their names" (Psalms 147:4 the King James Version).

(2) Their Distance.

As regards the height, that is to say, the distance of the stars, this is immeasurable except in a very few cases. By using as a base line the enormous diameter of the earth's orbit--186,000,000 miles--astronomers have been able to get a hint as to the distance of some 40 or 50 stars. Of these the nearest, Alpha Centauri, is distant about twenty-five millions of millions of miles; the brighter stars are on the average quite ten times as far; whilst of the distances of the untold millions of stars beyond, we have no gauge. For us, as for King Solomon, the "heaven" of the stars is "for height" (Proverbs 25:3), for a height that is beyond measure, giving us therefore the only fitting image for the immensity of God. So Zophar the Naamathite asked, "Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is high as heaven; what canst thou do?" And Eliphaz the Temanite reiterated the same thought, "Is not God in the height of heaven? And behold the height of the stars, how high they are!" (Job 11:7,Job 11:8; Job 22:12). And the height of the heaven, that is to say, the distance of the stars, stands as a symbol, not only of God's infinitude, but of His faithfulness and of His mercy: "Thus saith Yahweh: If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, then will I also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith Yahweh" (Jeremiah 31:37). And the Psalmist sings, "For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him" (Psalms 103:11 the King James Version).

(3) Their Brightness.

The stars are not all of equal brightness; a fact alluded to by Paul when he wrote that "one star differeth from another star in glory" (1 Corinthians 15:41). The ancient Greek astronomers divided the stars according to their brightness into six classes or magnitudes, to use the modern technical term, the average star in any particular magnitude giving about two and a half times as much light as the average star of the next magnitude.

Just as the number of the stars and their ordered movement led them to be considered as a mighty army, "the host of heaven," and as a type of that other celestial host, the holy angels, so the individual stars are taken as fitly setting forth, by their brightness and exalted position, spiritual powers and intelligences, whether these are the angels of God, as in Job 38:7, or rulers of churches, as in Revelation 1:20. The same image is naturally applied in a yet higher sense to Christ Himself, who is the "star out of Jacob" (Numbers 24:17), and "the bright, the morning star" (Revelation 22:16; 2 Peter 1:19).

7. Morning Stars:

The Stars as a Dial

In ancient times there were two methods by which the progress of the year could be learned from observation of the heavens. The sun was "for seasons," and the change in its place of rising or of setting supplied the first method. The second method was supplied by the stars. For as the Hebrew shepherds, such as Jacob, Moses, David and Amos, kept watch over their flocks by night, they saw the silent procession of the stars through the hours of darkness, and knew without clock or timepiece how they were progressing. They noticed what stars were rising in the East, what stars were culminating in the South, what were setting in the West, and how the northern stars, always visible, like a great dial, were turning. But as the eastern horizon began to brighten toward the dawn, they would specially note what stars were the last to rise before their shining was drowned in the growing light of day. These, the last stars to appear in the East before sunrise, were the "morning stars," the heralds of the sun. As morning followed morning, these morning stars would be seen earlier and earlier, and therefore for a longer time before they disappeared in the dawn, until some morning, other stars, unseen before, would shine out for a few moments, and thus supplant the stars seen earlier as the actual heralds of the sun. Such a first appearance of a star was termed by the Greek astronomers its "heliacal" rising, and the mention in Scripture of "morning stars," or "stars of the twilight" (Job 38:7; Job 3:9), shows that the Hebrews like the Greeks were familiar with this feature of the ordinances of heaven, and noted the progress of the year by observation of the apparent changes of the celestial host. One star would herald the beginning of spring, another the coming of winter; the time to plow, the time to sow, the time of the rains would all be indicated by successive "morning stars" as they appeared.

8. Falling Stars:

(1) Meteorites.

Meteors are not stars at all in the popular sense of the word, but are quite small bodies drawn into our atmosphere, and rendered luminous for a few moments by the friction of their rush through it. But as they have been shown not to be mere distempers of the air, as they were considered at one time, but bodies of a truly planetary nature, traveling round the sun in orbits as defined as that of the earth itself, the epithet is quite appropriate to them. They are astronomical and not merely terrestrial bodies. Meteors are most striking either when they are seen as solitary aerolites or when they fall in some great shower. The most celebrated shower which seemed to radiate from the constellation Leo--and hence called the Leonid--gave for centuries a magnificent spectacle every thirty-three years; the last great occasion having been on November 14, 1866. Those who saw that shower could appreciate the vivid description given by John when he wrote, "The stars of the heaven fell unto the earth, as a fig tree casteth her unripe figs when she is shaken of a great wind" (Revelation 6:13), for the meteors fell like autumn leaves, driven by a great storm, as numerous and as fast. The prophet Isaiah also used a very similar figure (Isaiah 34:4).

(2) The Star "Wormwood."

Such great meteoric showers are most impressive spectacles, but solitary meteors are sometimes hardly less striking. Bolides or aerolites, as such great solitary meteors are termed, are apparently of great size, and are sometimes so brilliant as to light up the sky even in broad daylight. Such a phenomenon is referred to by John in his description of the star Wormwood: "There fell from heaven a great star, burning as a torch" (Revelation 8:10). Such aerolites are not entirely consumed in their passage through our atmosphere, but portions of them reach the ground, and in some cases large masses have been found intact. These are generally of a stony nature, but others are either almost pure iron or contain much of that metal. Such a meteoric stone was used as the pedestal of the image of the goddess Diana at Ephesus, and the "townclerk" of the city referred to this circumstance when he reminded the Ephesians that their city was "temple-keeper of the great Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter" (Acts 19:35).

9. Wandering Stars:

It has already been noted that the moon may perhaps have received its Hebrew name from the fact of its being a "wanderer" among the stars, but there is no direct and explicit reference in Scripture to other celestial "wanderers" except in Jude 1:13: "Wandering stars, for whom the blackness of darkness hath been reserved for ever." These asteres planetai are not our "planets," but either meteors or comets, more probably the latter, as meteors are more appropriately described as "falling stars."

(1) Comets as a Spiritual Type.

But as comets and meteors are intimately connected with each other--meteors being in many cases the debris of comets--the simile applies to either. False professors of religion, unstable or apostate teachers, are utterly unlike the stars which shine forth in heaven for ever, but are fitly represented by comets, which are seen only for a few weeks or days, and then are entirely lost to sight, or by meteors, which flash out for a few moments, and are then totally extinguished.

All the great comets, all the comets that have been conspicuous to the naked eye, with the single exception of that named after Halley, have appeared but once within the period of human records and Halley's Comet only takes 80 days to traverse that part of its orbit which lies within the orbit of the earth; the rest of its period of revolution--76 years--is passed outside that boundary, and for 38 years at a time it remains outside the orbit of Neptune, more than 2,800,000,000 miles from the sun. The other great comets have only visited our neighborhood once within our experience.

(2) Comets Referred to in Scripture?

The question has been raised whether the appearance of comets is ever referred to in Scripture. Josephus, speaking of the signs which preceded the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, says, "Thus there was a star resembling a sword which stood over the city, and a comet that continued a whole year" (BJ, VI, v, 3). The "star resembling a sword" was doubtless the return of Halley's Comet in 66 AD, and the phrase used by Josephus has suggested that it was a stellar phenomenon that is referred to in 1 Chronicles 21:16: "The angel of Yahweh .... between earth and heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem." But this, and the corresponding suggestion as to the nature of the flaming sword that kept the way of the tree of life (Genesis 3:24), are unsupported conjectures not worthy of attention. The astronomer Pingre thought that the first vision of Jeremiah of the "rod of an almond tree" and of a "boiling caldron" (Jeremiah 1:11,Jeremiah 1:13) had its physical basis in a return of Halley's Comet, and other commentators have thought that cometary appearances were described in the "pillars of smoke" of Joel 2:30; but none of these suggestions appear to have plausibility.

II. The Constellations.

The principal achievement of the science of astronomy in the centuries during which the books of the Old Testament were written was the arrangement and naming of the constellations, and there can be no reasonable doubt that the same system was known to the Hebrews as that which has been handed down to us through the Greek astronomers. Paul certainly knew the Greek constellations, for in his sermon on Mars' Hill (Acts 17:28) he quoted from that poetical description of them which Aratus the great poet of Cilicia had written about 270 BC. But these constellations have a much greater antiquity than this, and it is probable that they were well known to Abraham before he left Ur of the Chaldees. It has been frequently shown (The Astronomy of the Bible, 158; Astronomy without a Telescope, 5) that these constellations themselves supply evidence that they were designed about 2700 BC. They thus antedated the time of Abraham by some centuries, and since some of their most characteristic forms are found upon old Babylonian "boundary stones," it is clear that they were known in the country from whence he came out.

1. Nachash, the "Crooked Serpent":

The direct references to these old constellation-forms in Scripture are not numerous. One of the clearest is in Job 26:13, where "formed the crooked serpent" (the King James Version) is used as the correlative of "garnished the heavens"; the great constellation of the writhing Dragon, placed at the crown of the heavens, being used, metaphorically, as an expression for all the constellations of the sky. For by its folds it encircles both the poles, that of the equator and that of the ecliptic.

2. Leviathan:

The term bariach, rendered "crooked" but better as in the Revised Version, margin as "fleeing," is applied by Isaiah to "Leviathan" (liwyathan: Isaiah 27:1), properly a "wreathed" or writhing animal, twisted in folds, and hence also called by the prophet `aqallathon, "crooked," "twisted," or "winding"; a very appropriate designation for Draco, the great polar Dragon. But the latter was not the only "crooked serpent" in the constellations; there were three others, two of which were placed with an astronomical significance not less precise than the coiling of Draco round the poles. Hydra, the Watersnake, marked out the original celestial equator for about one-third of its circumference, and Serpens, the Adder, lay partly along the celestial equator and then was twisted up the autumnal colure, and reached the zenith with its head.

The arrangement of the twelve signs of the zodiac to mark out the apparent yearly path of the sun, and of these three serpent- forms to hold their respective and significant positions in the heavens, shows that a real progress in astronomy had been made before the constellations were designed, and that their places were allotted to these figures on a definite astronomical plan.

3. The Seed of the Woman:

A further purpose is shown by the relation of the three serpents to the neighboring figures, and it is clear that the history preserved in Genesis 3:1–24 was known to the designers of the constellations, and that they wished to perpetuate its memory by means of the stellar frescoes. For the constellations, Scorpio, Ophiuchus and Serpens, show us a man strangling a snake and standing on a scorpion; the head of the latter he crushes with one foot, but his other foot is wounded by its reverted sting. When these three constellations were due South, that is to say, at midnight in spring-time, Hercules and Draco were due north, and presented the picture of a man kneeling on one knee, and pressing down with his other foot the head of the great northern serpent or dragon. During the winter midnight the zodiacal constellation on the meridian was the Virgin, figured as a woman holding an ear of corn in her hand, while beneath her the immense length of Hydra was stretched out upon its belly in the attitude of a snake when fleeing at full speed. These figures are evidently meant to set forth in picture that which is expressed in word in Genesis 3:14,Genesis 3:15, "And Yahweh God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."

4. The Bow Set in the Cloud:

Nor is this the only narrative in Genesis which finds a parallel in the constellations. Among the southern groups we find a ship Argo that has grounded on a rock; and close to it stands a figure, Centaurus, who is apparently slaying an animal, Lupus, beside an Altar. The cloud of smoke arising from the Altar is represented by the Milky Way, and in the midst of the cloud there is set the Bow of the Archer, Sagittarius. Here there seems to be pictured the covenant made with Noah after he offered his sacrifice when he left the ark: "I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth" (Genesis 9:13). Thus the constellations, designed several centuries before the time of Abraham, clearly express a knowledge, and appear designed to preserve a remembrance of the two first promises made by God to mankind as recorded in the early chapters of Gen.

There is no need to assume, as some writers have done, that all the 48 primitive constellations were of Divine origin, or even that any of them were. If some of the early astronomers possessed in one form or another the histories that we have in Genesis 3:8, Genesis 3:9, it would not be unnatural for them to attempt to preserve a memorial of them in the heavens by associating these figures with the stars.

It does not follow that all the old constellations have an analogous significance, or that if they have, we should now be able to detect it, and a great deal of ingenuity has been wasted in the attempt to convert the old 48 constellations into a sort of gospel in hieroglyphic. Interpretations of this order were current quite early in Christian times, for they are denounced at considerable length and in detail by Hippolytus in his Refutation of All the Heresies, circa 210 AD. Their revival in recent years is chiefly due to Mazzaroth, a series of papers by the late Miss Frances Rolleston in which fanciful etymologies were given to the Arabic names by which the principal stars are known. These names, for the most part, simply indicate the places which the stars were severally supposed to hold in the figures to which they were assigned, and Miss Rolleston's derivations for them are quite misleading and unfounded. Nevertheless her results have been blindly accepted by a number of writers.

5. The Dragon of Eclipse:

The peculiar arrangement of the serpent forms in the constellations, and especially the position allotted to Hydra, extended along the equator with its head near the spring equinox and its tail near that of autumn, appears to have given rise to the terms "Dragon's Head" (omega) and "Dragon's Tail" (an upside-down omega), for the nodes or points of intersection of the ecliptic (the apparent path of the sun) with the celestial equator, and hence for nodes in general. As eclipses of the sun and moon can only occur when those bodies are near the nodes of the moon's orbit, that is, near the Dragon's Head or Tail, the myth seems to have arisen that such eclipses were due to one or other of the two great lights being swallowed by a dragon, and a reference to this myth is found in Job 3:8: "Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready (the Revised Version, margin: skillful) to rouse up leviathan." The persons referred to are the magicians who pretended to be able by their incantations to cause an eclipse of the sun by bringing up the mythical dragon that was supposed to devour it. Astronomical nomenclature still retains a trace of these old expressions, for the time taken by the moon to pass from one node to the same node again is still called a "draconic month," a "month of the dragon."

6. Joseph's Dream:

If we realize that the Hebrews were quite familiar with the same constellation figures that we have inherited through the Greeks, several indirect allusions to them gain an added meaning. Thus Joseph dreamed that "the sun and the moon and eleven stars made obeisance" to him (Genesis 37:9). The twelve constellations of the zodiac are the twelve among which the sun and moon move, and thus constitute, as it were, their family. Eleven of them therefore represented eleven sons of Jacob, Joseph himself being of course the twelfth. There is some evidence that the time came when the suggestion of this dream was acted upon to the extent that some of the tribes adopted certain of the constellation figures by way of crest or armorial bearing. In Numbers 2:1–34 it is stated that each of the four camps into which the host of Israel was divided had its own standard:

7. The Standards of the Tribes:

"Neither the Mosaic law nor the Old Testament generally gives us any intimation as to the form or character of the standard (deghel). According to rabbinical tradition, the standard of Judah bore the figure of a lion, that of Reuben the likeness of a man, or of a man's head, that of Ephraim the figure of an ox, and that of Da the figure of an eagle; so that the four living creatures united in the cherubic forms described by Ezekiel were represented upon these four standards" (Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Pentateuch, III, 17). A variant of this tradition gives as the standard of Reuben, "unstable as water" (Genesis 49:4 the King James Version), a Man and a River, and of Dan, "Da shall be a serpent in the way" (Genesis 49:17), an Eagle and a Serpent. These four forms are also found in the constellations in the four quarters of the heavens. Aquarius, the man with a stream of water, and Leo were the original zodiacal constellations of the two solstices, Taurus was that of the spring equinox, and Aquila and Serpens were close to the autumnal equinox, the latter being actually upon the colure.

8. The Cherubim:

This distribution of the four cherubic forms in the four quarters of heaven gives a special significance to the invocation used by Hezekiah and the Psalmist, "Thou that dwellest between the cherubims" (Isaiah 37:16 King James Version: Psalms 80:1 the King James Version). The Shekinah glory rested indeed between the golden cherubim over the ark in the Holy of Holies, but "the Most High dwelleth not in houses made with hands" (Acts 7:48), and the same cherubic forms were pictured on the curtains of the heavens. "Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee" (1 Kings 8:27); `Thou dwellest between the cherubim,' filling the infinite expanse of the stellar universe.

9. Balaam's Prophecy:

When Balaam saw "Israel dwelling according to their tribes; and the Spirit of God came upon him" (Numbers 24:2), it was not unnatural that he should allude in his prophecy to the great standards which he would see floating above the camps, and three of the four appear to be indicated: the bull of Joseph--"He hath as it were the strength of the wild-ox"; the lion of Judah--"He lay down as a lion and as a great lion," the King James Version; and Aquarius, the man pouring out a stream of water from a pitcher, the cognizance of Reuben--"Water shall flow from his buckets" (Numbers 24:7,Numbers 24:8,Numbers 24:9).

In a similar way when the prophets refer to the enemies of Israel under the figure of dragons or reptiles, there seems occasionally an indirect reference to the serpents that represent the powers of evil in the pictures that have been associated with the star groups. Thus in Isaiah 27:1, the English Revised Version, it is prophesied that the Lord "shall punish leviathan the swift serpent, and leviathan the crooked serpent; and He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea"; the first allusion being appropriate to the attitude of Hydra, the second to Draco, the third to Cetus. Whilst the group of constellations, Andromeda, Cetus and Eridanus, the woman persecuted by a dragon that casts a river out of its mouth, a river which flowing down below the horizon appears to be swallowed up by the earth, would seem to have furnished John with some of the material for the imagery of Revelation 12:1–17 in his great vision.

Besides references direct or indirect to the familiar constellation figures, four special astronomical terms occur in the Hebrew of the Old Testament which have given rise to much discussion. These are Kimah, Kecil, Mazzaroth and `Ayish. The tradition of their significance had been lost before the Septuagint translation was made, but it may be taken as practically certain that the renderings given in the Revised Version (British and American) are substantially correct.

10. Pleiades:

The word Kimah occurs in three passages, in each case in conjunction with Kecil (Amos 5:8; Job 9:9; Job 38:31). It apparently means a "heap" or "cluster," and is hence especially applicable to the beautiful little group of the Pleiades, the most conspicuous star cluster visible to the naked eye. There is the less uncertainty about this identification since "kima" is the term generally used in Syriac literature to denote the Pleiades.

Six stars can now easily be seen by any good sight, but very keen-sighted persons can detect more; thus Maestlin, the tutor of Kepler, mapped 11 before the invention of the telescope, and in recent times Carrington and Denning have counted 14 with the naked eye. Still, 6 is the number visible to most persons, though there is a curiously widespread and uniform tradition that they once "were seven who now are six," and seven is the number almost always assigned to them in literature. Hesiod calls them "the seven sisters, the Virgin stars," and Milton, "the seven Atlantic sisters," as representing the daughters of Atlas. Many of the Greek poets, however, regarded them as Peleiades, "rock pigeons," doves, flying from the hunter Orion; but whether they have been considered as representing doves or maidens, seven has still been their traditional number. Possibly one of the group has declined in brightness in the course of the centuries; Alcyone would seem to have increased in brightness, for though now the brightest, it is not one of the four that figure in Ptolemy's Catalogue, and if one has increased in brightness, others may have diminished. In the telescope many hundreds of stars are visible. The photographic plate has registered thousands and shows the principal stars as enveloped and threaded together by delicate streams of nebulous matter, the stars shining on these filamentous lines of light like pearls upon a string. This, the appearance of the Pleiades on the best modern photographs, would be strikingly appropriate to the rendering of Job 38:31, which has been adopted in the Revised Version (British and American), "Canst thou bind the cluster (m "chain") of the Pleiades?" and the question put to Job would be equivalent to asking him if it were his power that had brought together the Pleiades and bound them in so compact a cluster. This rendering which involves the reading "ma`anaddoth" is supported by the Septuagint, and all the early versions, and hence by nearly all Orientalists. The reading in Massoretic Text, "ma`adhannoth," that is to say, "dainties" or "delights," and adopted in the King James Version, where the word is paraphrased as "sweet influences," is however correct, as will be shown below.

The designation of the group as that of the seven stars gives a special significance to one of the details of the vision of John: "I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the candlesticks one like unto a son of man, .... And He had in his right hand seven stars: .... The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks are seven churches" (Revelation 1:12,Revelation 1:13,Revelation 1:16,Revelation 1:20). The seven stars in a single compact cluster shining as one, furnish an image of the church in its many diversities and its essential unity.

It may be well to correct here a certain widely diffused error. When it was discovered that the sun itself with all its attendant planets was traveling rapidly through space, the German astronomer Madler hazarded the suggestion that the center of the sun's motion, the attracting body that governed it, might lie in the group of the Pleiades, and this suggestion has been quoted in many popular writings as if it were a demonstrated fact. It soon became evident that there was no sufficient ground for the suggestion, and the idea has been entirely abandoned by astronomers.

11. Orion:

The word Kecil as denominating a constellation occurs in the singular number in three passages, and in each it is placed in antithesis to Kimah. In a fourth passage (Isaiah 13:10) it occurs by itself and is in the plural. There is no doubt as to the significance of the word in its common use. In 70 cases it is translated either "fool" or "foolish." It does not signify a weak- minded person, so much as a violent, impious, self-confident one. As a star name, it is probably rightly considered to refer to the glorious constellation of Orion. According to an old tradition, the name of Nimrod, mentioned in Genesis 10:10, as the founder of Babel, Erech, Accad and Calneh, was given by his courtiers to this most brilliant of all the constellations, one that by its form somewhat suggests a gigantic warrior armed for the fight.

Until recently it was not found possible to identify the Nimrod of Scripture with any Babylonian monarch until Dr. T. G. Pinches suggested that "Nimrod" was a deliberate Hebrew transmutation of "Marduk," the name of the great Babylonian national hero, and chief deity of their pantheon. "The change was brought about by making the root triliteral, and the ending uk (ak) in Merodach-Baladan disappearing first, Marduk appeared as Marad. This was connected with the root maradh, `to be rebellious,' and the word was still further mutilated, or rather deformed, by having a ni attached, assimilating it to a certain extent to the niph`al forms of the Hebrew verbs, and making a change altogether in conformity with the genius of the Hebrew language" (The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of Assyria and Babylonia, 129-30). In the very brief reference to Nimrod in Genesis 10:8,Genesis 10:9, he is three times overemphatically termed gibbor, "a mighty (one)" and this has been the name of this constellation among Syrians, Arabs and Jews for many centuries. Indeed the brightest star of the constellation, the one in the left knee, now generally known as Rigel, is still occasionally called Algebar, a corruption of Al Jabbar, though now one of the fainter stars near it more generally bears that name. The word Kecil as applied to this constellation would parallel closely the etymology suggested for the name "Merodach," by its transformation into "Nimrod" as if it were derived from maradh, "to rebel." He who was to the Babylonians a deified hero, was to the Hebrews a rebel Titan, bound in chains among the stars that all might behold his punishment, and in this aspect the question, "Canst thou .... loose the bands of Orion?" (Job 38:31) would be equivalent to asking "Canst thou bring down out of their places the stars that make up this figure and so, as it were, set the Titan free?"

In Isaiah 13:10, kecil occurs in the plural kecilim, "for the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light"; kecilim being translated as "constellations" under the impression that Orion, the brightest of all the constellations, is here put for the constellations in general. This is no doubt correct, but the context shows that the meaning goes farther than this, and that the kecilim who were to be darkened were the proud and arrogant tyrants like Nimrod or Merodach who would, if possible, climb up into heaven itself, even as Orion is represented in our star atlases as if trying to climb up into the zodiac-- the home of the sun.

12. Mazzaroth, the Constellations of the Zodiac:

A further astronomical term which occurs in Job 38:32 is left untranslated in both the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American), namely, the word Mazzaroth. It occurs only once in the Old Testament, but the similar word mazzaloth, translated "planets" in the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American), occurs in 2 Kings 23:5. For the latter see ASTROLOGY. In the fifth tablet of the Babylonian Epic of Creation, we read:

1. He (Marduk) made the station for the great gods;

2. The stars, their images, as the stars of the zodiac he fixed.

3. He ordained the year, and into sections (mizrata) he divided it.

4. For the twelve months he fixed three stars.

Here in the third line, mizrata, cognate with the Hebrew mazzaroth, means the sections or divisions of the year, corresponding to the signs of the zodiac mentioned in the second line.

Yet again when Job 9:9 is compared with Job 38:31,Job 38:32, it is seen that the place of the word mazzaroth in the latter passage is held by the expression "the chambers of the south" (chadhre theman) in the earlier. Mazzaroth therefore is equivalent to "the chambers of the south," and clearly signifies the twelve constellations of the zodiac through which the sun appears to pass in the course of the year, poetically likened to the "inns," the "chambers" or "tabernacles" in which the sun successively rests during the several monthly stages of his annual journey. The same idea was employed by the Arabs in their "mansions of the moon," its "lodging-houses" (menazil), which are 28 in number, since the moon takes 28 days to make the circuit of the heavens, just as the sun takes 12 months.

The word Mazzaroth therefore represents the twelve "signs" or, to speak more correctly, the twelve "constellations" of the zodiac. These two terms are often used indiscriminately, but there is a real difference between their significations. The constellations of the zodiac are the actual groupings of the stars, lying along the ecliptic, and are quite irregular in form and length. The signs have no connection with the actual stars but are imaginary divisions of the ecliptic, all exactly equal in length, and they are reckoned from that point in the heavens where the sun is at the moment that it is crossing the celestial equator in its northward motion in springtime. As this point, known to astronomers as "the first point of Aries," moves slowly amongst the stars, taking 25,800 years to complete a revolution of the heavens, the signs of the zodiac also move among the stars, and hence, though at one time each sign bore a rough and general correspondence to the constellation of the same name, the signs have gradually drawn away from them. The constellations of the zodiac were designed about 2700 BC, but the signs--the equal divisions of the zodiac named from them--cannot have been adopted earlier than 700 BC, and were probably even later. For since Aries is the first of the signs, it is clear that it was the first of the constellations at the time when the equal division of the zodiac was effected, and 700 BC is the very earliest date that the constellation Aries can have been so regarded. Incidentally it may be remarked that the mention in the Babylonian story of creation of the allotment of three stars to each of the sections (Mizrata) of the year, shows that not only had the division of the zodiac into 12 equal signs been effected, but that a further step had been taken, namely, the division of each sign into 3 equal parts, later known amongst the Greeks as its "decans," corresponding roughly to the 36 decades of the Egyptian calendar. Whatever, therefore, may have been the antiquity of the traditions embodied in it, the actual Babylonian poem quoted above, so far from being an early document, as it was at one time supposed to be, is probably almost as late as the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar.

13. "Arcturus":

There are three constellations, natural groupings of the stars, the Pleiades and Orion and "Charles's Wain," which have always attracted men's attention, and we accordingly find them referred to in the earliest poems extant. Thus they are the three groups of the stars most frequently mentioned by Homer and Hesiod. The two first groups, the Pleiades and Orion, are, as we have seen, indicated by Kimah and Kecil. We should therefore naturally expect that the third constellation which we find associated with these in the Book of Job should be none other than the seven bright stars in the North, the principal part of the Great Bear. The Hebrew name for this third constellation appears in two slightly different forms. It is `ash in Job 9:9, and `ayish in Job 38:32, and in the latter case it is connected with its "sons." The last star of Charles' Wain or the Plough, as the group is often called among ourselves, still bears the name Benetnasch, derived from the Arabic name Benet Na`sh, "the daughters of the Bier," by which the Arabs designated the three stars in the Plough-handle, while they called the four stars in the body of the Plough, Na`sh, "the bier" or "litter." Na`sh and its daughters so closely correspond to " `ayish and its sons," that there can be no reasonable doubt that the same seven bright stars are intended; so that the rendering of the Revised Version (British and American), "Canst thou guide the Bear with her train?" correctly reproduces the original meaning. The Arcturus of the King James Version is derived from Vulgate, where it is probably a mistake for Arctos, that is to say, Ursa Major, the Great Bear.

The antithesis which is presented in Job 38:32 now reveals itself. The Mazzaroth are the twelve constellations of the zodiac, and of these each one rules the night for about a month in its turn; they are each "led forth" in its "season." Each, in its turn, is the "chamber," "tabernacle" or "resting-place" of the sun, and they are appropriately called "chambers of the south," since it is especially in the southern sky that each is seen. In contrast to these are the northern constellations, those round the pole, of which the Great Bear or Charles' Wain is the brightest and best known At the time of the origin of the constellations, this group was much nearer the pole of the heavens than at present, but now as then these stars are not "led forth," for they are visible at all hours and during every night; but they are "guided"; they move round the pole of the heavens in an unending circle, as if the wain or chariot were being guided by a skillful driver.

(1) The "Scatterers," or the North.

There is some probability that in Job 37:9 the same two regions of the heavens are alluded to: "Out of the chamber of the south cometh the storm, and cold out of the north." It will be observed that the complete expression, "chamber of the south," is not in the original, the translators having supplied "of the south" from analogy with Job 9:9. The sirocco comes then from the region held by the mazzal, the "chamber," or constellation of the zodiac, then on the meridian. But the cold, the blizzard, comes from "the scatterers" (Mezarim). Who or what are the scatterers, and why do they represent the north? The late Professor Schiaparelli suggested that by a slight difference in the pointing, the word might be read as mizrayim, "the two winnowing fans," and that this may well have been a native term for the stars which we now know as the two Bears, Ursa Major and Minor, emphatically the northern constellations; the names being given them from the natural grouping of their chief stars, just as they are known as the two "Dippers" in the United States, or the two "Ladles" in China ("Astronomy in the Old Testament," 67-72).

(2) The Ordinances of Heaven Established on the Earth.