The Desired of all Nations.
The first constellation in Virgo explains that this coming “Branch” will be a child, and that He should be the “Desire of all nations.”
The ancient name of this constellation is Comah,[28] the desired, or the longed for. We have the word used by the Holy Spirit in this very connection, in Hag. ii. 7: “The DESIRE of all nations shall come.”
Plate 2: Coma (the Desired)
The ancient Zodiacs pictured this constellation as a woman with a child in her arms. Albumazar[29] (or Abu Masher), an Arabian astronomer of the eighth century, says, “There arises in the first Decan,[30] as the Persians, Chaldeans, and Egyptians, and the two Hermes and Ascalius teach, a young woman, whose Persian name denotes a pure virgin, sitting on a throne, nourishing an infant boy (the boy, I say), having a Hebrew name, by some nations called [pg 035] IHESU, with the signification IEZA, which in Greek is called CHRISTOS.”
But this picture is not found in any of the modern maps of the stars. There we find to-day a woman's wig! It appears that Berenice, the wife of Euergetes (Ptolemy III.), king of Egypt in the third century b.c., when her husband once went on a dangerous expedition, vowed to consecrate her fine head of hair to Venus if he returned in safety. Her hair, which was hung up in the Temple of Venus, was subsequently stolen, and to comfort Berenice, Conon, an astronomer of Alexandria (b.c. 283-222), gave it out that Jupiter had taken it and made it a constellation!
This is a good example of how the meaning of other constellations have been perverted (ignorantly or intentionally). In this case, as in others, the transition from ancient to more modern languages helped to hide the meaning. The Hebrew name was Coma (desired). But the Greeks had a word for hair, Có-me. This again is transferred to the Latin coma, and thus “Coma Berenicæ” (the hair of Berenice) comes down to us to-day as the name of this constellation, and gives us a woman's wig instead of that Blessed One, “the Desire of all Nations.”
In this case, however, we are able to give absolute proof that this is a perversion.
The ancient Egyptian name for this constellation was Shes-nu, the desired son!