The Astronomy of the Bible: An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References of Holy Scripture — John Shaqi
The Astronomy of the Bible: An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References of Holy ScriptureMaunder, E. Walter (Edward Walter)
Religion
The Astronomy of the Bible: An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References of Holy Scripture
Maunder, E. Walter (Edward Walter)
Astronomy in the Bible; Constellations
The solemn procession of the starry host through the long night--the
rising in the east, the southing, and the setting in the west--is not
the only ordered movement of the stars of heaven that may be recognized.
As night by night brightens to its dawn, if we watch the eastern horizon
and note what stars are the last to rise above it before the growing
daylight overpowers the feeble stellar rays, then we see that some
bright star, invisible on the preceding mornings, shines out for a few
moments low down in the glimmer of the dawn. As morning succeeds morning
it rises earlier, until at last it mounts when it is yet dark, and some
other star takes its place as the herald of the rising sun. We recognize
to-day this "heliacal rising" of the stars. Though we do not make use of
it in our system of time-measuring, it played an important part in the
calendar-making of the ancients. Such heralds of the rising sun were
called "morning stars" by the Hebrews, and they used them "for seasons"
and "for years." One star or constellation of stars would herald by its
"heliacal rising" the beginning of spring, another the coming of winter;
the time to plough, the time to sow, the time of the rains, would all be
indicated by the successive "morning stars" as they appeared. And after
an interval of three hundred and sixty-five or three hundred and
sixty-six days the same star would again show itself as a morning star
for a second time, marking out the year, whilst the other morning stars
would follow, each in its due season. So we read in Job, that God led
"forth the Mazzaroth in their season."
This wonderful procession of the midnight sky is not known and admired
by those who live in walled cities and ceiled houses, as it is by those
who live in the open, in the wilderness. It is not therefore to be
wondered at, that we find praise of these "works of the Lord . . .
sought out of all them that have pleasure therein," mostly amongst the
shepherds, the herdsmen, the wanderers in the open--in the words and
prophecies of Job, of Jacob, Moses, David and Amos.
The thought that each new day, beginning with a new outburst of light,
was, in its degree, a kind of new creation, an emblem of the original
act by which the world was brought into being, renders appropriate and
beautiful the ascription of the term "morning stars" to those "sons of
God," the angels. As the stars in the eastern sky are poetically thought
of as "singing together" to herald the creation of each new day, so in
the verses already quoted from the Book of Job, the angels of God are
represented as shouting for joy when the foundations of the earth were
laid.
The "morning star" again stands as the type and earnest of that new
creation which God has promised to His servants. The epistle to Thyatira
concludes with the promise--"He that overcometh, and keepeth my works
unto the end, . . . I will give him the morning star."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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