--Job xxxviii., 31. I may merely remark on these passages that the chambers of the south are supposed to be those parts of the southern heavens invisible in the latitude in which Job resided. The bonds of Pleiades and of Orion probably refer to the apparently close union of the stars of the former group, and the wide separation of those of the latter; a difference which, to the thoughtful observer of the heavens, is more striking than most instances of that irregular grouping of the stars which still forms a question in astronomy, from the uncertainty whether it is real, or only an optical deception arising from stars at different distances coming nearly into a line with each other. I have seen in some recent astronomical work this very instance of the Pleiades and Orion taken as a marked illustration of this problematical fact in astronomy. _Mazzaroth_ are supposed by modern expositors to be the signs of the Zodiac. On the whole, the Hebrew books give us little information as to the astronomical theories of the time when they were written. They are entirely non-committal as to the nature of the connections and revolutions of the heavenly bodies; and indeed regard these as matters in their time beyond the grasp of the human mind, though well known to the Creator and regulated by his laws. From other sources we have facts leading to the belief that even in the time of Moses, and certainly in that of the later Biblical writers, there was not a little practical astronomy in the East, and some good theory. The Hindoo astronomy professes to have observations from 3000 B.C., and the arguments of Baily and others, founded on internal evidence, give some color of truth to the claim. The Chaldeans at a very early period had ascertained the principal circles of the sphere, the position of the poles, and the nature of the apparent motions of the heavens as the results of revolution on an inclined axis. The Egyptian astronomy we know mainly from what the Greeks borrowed from it. Thales, 640 B.C., taught that the moon is lighted by the sun, and that the earth is spherical, and the position of its five zones. Pythagoras, 580 B.C., knew, in addition to the sphericity of the earth, the obliquity of the ecliptic, the identity of the evening and morning star, and that the earth revolves round the sun. This Greek astronomy appears immediately after the opening of Egypt to the Greeks; and both these philosophers studied in that country. Such knowledge, and more of the same character, may therefore have existed in Egypt at a much earlier period. The Psalms abound in beautiful references to the creation of the fourth day: "When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man, that thou visitest him?" --Psalm viii.