It is evident from this important passage that the nomadic Hebrews worshipped their god or gods by huts, and that one among the objects of their worship was a Star, let alone what star Kiyyûn may be, whether identical with the Arabic keyvân, or some other. Thus, so far as we can infer from the Prophet’s word, their divine worship was paid to the night-sky. The nomad looks on the night-sky as a pasture where the herdsman (for the mythical figures of the night-sky are mostly regarded by him as herdsmen) lets his cattle feed; and it is easy to conceive that at the theological stage he venerates in huts the mythical figure now converted into a god, ascribing to him the same dwelling which he occupies on high in the sky. The most important feast of the nomadic Hebrews was the Feast of Sukkôth, or Tabernacles, which probably stands in close connexion with these Sukkôth of a god, and at the agricultural stage became a Harvest-feast. But even at that stage the connexion of the feast with nomadic life and the past nomadism of the nation itself, lived long in its memory (see Lev. XXIII. 43). That which they worshipped in the huts was not the Sun,[580] the bright sky of day, but kôkhâbh, a Star, doubtless no particular star, but only the starry heaven in general. For the rain, the most beneficent element to the nomad, was identified with the stars, i.e. with the sky at night. In the view of the ancient Arabs there were also Hyades in the starry heaven; we meet in poetry with the expression marâbîʿ al-nujûm ‘spring rain of the stars’ (_Muʿallaḳâ_ of Lebîd, v. 4). A familiar phrase in the speech of the nomadic Arabs is ‘the stars have brought rain.’[581] Moḥammed forbids the Moslims to express their common idea of the origin of the rain by their usual phrase muṭirnâ binauʾ kaḏâ ‘we have received rain from such and such a star,’ though he allows the connexion of the rain with the stars, and only insists on the recognition of Allâh as first cause, while the nauʾ is the immediate origin.[582] Similarly the Mohammedan Arabs were forbidden to call the rainbow the bow of the Thunder-god Ḳozaḥ.[583] The dew, also, has a connexion with the anwâʾ ‘stars’ (plural of nauʾ). It is not without interest to find this view in a Jewish-Arabic writer of the middle ages.[584] The worship of the kôkhâbh ‘star’ by the Hebrew nomads must therefore have a special connexion with the rain. Ancient mankind did not distinguish between the cloudless sky which grows dark at night, and the sky gloomy with clouds and rain by day (see supra, p. 42). He notices the darkness only, not the various times of day or night at which it occurs. Hence a sunless sky in general is treated as bringing rain. To show what connexion he imagined to subsist between the _huts_ (sukkôth) and the rainy sky, I will quote a verse of a hymn to Jahveh, attributed to David, and said to have been sung on his deliverance from the power of Saul: