Dost thou bind the knots of the Pleiades,[1]
or loose the fetters of Orion?[2]
Dost thou bring forth the moon's watches at their season,
and the Bear and her offspring—dost thou guide them?
Knowest thou the laws of heaven?
dost thou determine its influence upon the earth?
(xxxviii. 28-33.)
'The laws of heaven!' Can we refuse to observe the first beginnings of a conception of the cosmos, remembering other passages of the Wisdom Literature in which the great world plan is distinctly referred to? Without denying a pre-Exile, native Hebrew tendency (comp. Job xxxviii. 33 with Jer. xxxi. 35, 36) may we not suppose that the physical theology of Babylonia had a large part in determining the form of this conception? Notice the reference to the influence of the sky upon the earth, and especially the Hebraised Babylonian phrase Mazzaroth (i.e. mazarati,[3] plural of mazarta, a watch), the watches or stations of the moon which marked the progress of the month. But it is not so much the intellectual curiosity manifest in these verses which we would dwell upon now as the poetic vigour of the gallery of zoology, and, we must add, the faith which pervades it, reminding us of a Bedouin prayer quoted by Major Palmer, 'O Thou who providest for the blind hyæna, provide for me!' Ten (or nine) specimens of animal life are given—the lion and (perhaps) the raven,[4] the wild goat and the hind, the wild*
- ↑ Heb. kima; comp. Ass. kimtu, 'a family.' The word occurs again in ix. 9,
Am. v. 8 (but are not this verse and the closely related one in iv. 13 additions by
a later editor of Amos in the Exile period?) - ↑ Heb. k'sīl, the name of the foolhardy giant who strove with Jehovah. The
Chaldeo-Assyrian astrology gave the name kisiluv to the ninth month, connecting
it with the zodiacal sign Sagittarius. But there are valid reasons for attaching the
Hebrew popular myth to Orion. - ↑ 'He did not watch the stars of heaven, nor the mazarati.' So Fox Talbot quotes from a cuneiform tablet (Transactions of Soc. of Bibl. Archæology, 1872, p. 341). The above explanation, however, which is that of Delitzsch on Job, differs from that of Fox Talbot.
- ↑ Mr. Bateson Wright's pointing, lá'ereb for la'ōrēbh, is plausible. The raven is an insignificant companion to the lion, and the birds of prey are mentioned at the end of Job's picture gallery. Render 'who provides in the evening his food,' &c.; but in this case should not lābhī in ver. 39 be rendered 'lion' rather than 'lioness' (note 'his young ones')? The root idea is probably voracity. That
