What was the meaning which it possessed in the thought of the writer of the book? What was the meaning which we should now put on such an inquiry, looking at the constellations from the standpoint which the researches of modern astronomy have given us?
The first meaning of the text would appear to be connected with the apparent movement of the sun amongst the stars in the course of the year. We cannot see the stars by daylight, or see directly where the sun is situated with respect to them; but, in very early times, men learnt to associate the seasons of the year with the stars which were last seen in the morning, above the place where the sun was about to rise; in the technical term once in use, with the heliacal risings of stars. When the constellations were first designed, the Pleiades rose heliacally at the beginning of April, and were the sign of the return of spring. Thus Aratus, in his constellation poem writes—
"Men mark them (i. e. the Pleiades) rising with the solar ray,
The harbinger of summer's brighter day."
They heralded, therefore, the revival of nature from her winter sleep, the time of which the kingly poet sang so alluringly—
"For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
The fig-tree ripeneth her green figs,
And the vines are in blossom,
They give forth their fragrance."
The constellation which thus heralded the return of this genial season was poetically taken as representing the power and influence of spring. Their "sweet influences" were those that had rolled away the gravestone of snow and ice which had lain upon the winter tomb of nature. Theirs was the power that brought the flowers up from under the turf; earth's constellations of a million varied stars to shine upwards in answer to the constellations of heaven above. Their influences filled copse and wood with the songs of happy birds. Theirs stirred anew the sap in the veins of the trees, and drew forth their reawakened strength in bud and blossom. Theirs was the bleating of the new-born lambs; theirs the murmur of the reviving bees.
Upon this view, then, the question to Job was, in effect, "What control hast thou over the powers of nature? Canst thou hold back the sun from shining in spring-time—from quickening flower, and herb, and tree with its gracious warmth? This is God's work, year by year over a thousand lands, on a million hills, in a million valleys. What canst thou do to hinder it?"
The question was a striking one; one which must have appealed to the patriarch, evidently a keen observer and lover of nature; and it was entirely in line with the other inquiries addressed to him in the same chapter.
"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?"
The Revised Version renders the question—