The Astronomy of the Bible / An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References of Holy Scripture

by E. Walter Maunder

"Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days;
And caused the dayspring to know his place;
That it might take hold of the ends of the earth,
That the wicked might be shaken out of it?
It is turned as clay to the seal;
And they stand as a garment."

The earth appears to be spoken of as being "turned" to the sun, the dayspring; and this, we know, takes place, morning by morning, in consequence of the diurnal rotation. But the last two lines are better rendered in the Revised Version—

"It is changed as clay under the seal;
And all things stand forth as a garment."

The ancient seals were cylinders, rolled over the clay, which, formless before, took upon it the desired relief as the seal passed over it. So a garment, laid aside and folded up during the night, is shapeless, but once again takes form when the wearer puts it on. And the earth, formless in the darkness, gains shape and colour and relief with the impress upon it of the morning light.

It is quite clear that the Hebrews did not suppose that it was a new sun that came up from the east each morning, as did Xenophanes and the Epicureans amongst the Greeks. It was the same sun throughout. Nor is there any idea of his hiding himself behind a mysterious mountain during the night. "The sun," the Preacher tells us, "ariseth and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose." The Hebrew was quite aware that the earth was unsupported in space, for he knew that the Lord "stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing." There was therefore nothing to hinder the sun passing freely under the earth from west to east, and thus making his path, not a mere march onward ending in his dissolution at sunset, but a complete "circuit," as noted by the writer of the nineteenth Psalm.

The fierceness of the sun's heat in Palestine rendered sun-stroke a serious danger. The little son of the Shunammite was probably so smitten as he watched his father at work with the reapers. So the promise is given to God's people more than once: "The sun shall not smite thee by day." "They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun smite them." The martyrs who pass through the great tribulation "shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat."

There are fewer references in Scripture to the vivifying effects of sunlight upon vegetation than we might have expected. The explanation is possibly to be found in the terrible perversion men had made of the benefits which came to them by means of this action of sunlight, by using them as an excuse for plunging into all kinds of nature-worship. Yet there are one or two allusions not without interest. As already mentioned, "the precious fruits brought forth by the sun" were promised to the tribe of Joseph, whilst the great modern discovery that nearly every form of terrestrial energy is derived ultimately from the energy of the sun's rays gives a most striking appropriateness to the imagery made use of by St. James.

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Lights, with Whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

God, that is to say, is the true Sun, the true Origin of all Lights, the true bestower of every good and perfect gift. The word rendered "variableness," is a technical word, used by ourselves in modern English as "parallax," and employed in the Septuagint Version to denote the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, described in the thirty-eighth chapter of the book of Job, as "the ordinances of the heavens." With the natural sun, therefore, there is "variableness," that is to say, real or apparent change of place; there is none with God. Neither is there with Him any darkness of eclipse; any "shadow" caused as in the case of the material sun, by the "turning" of earth and moon in their orbits. The knowledge of "the alternations of the turning of the sun," described in the Book of Wisdom as a feature of the learning of Solomon, was a knowledge of the laws of this "variableness" and "turning"; especially of the "turning" of its rising and setting points at the two solstices; and St. James may well have had that passage in his mind when he wrote. For Science deals with the knowledge of things that change, as they change, and of their changes, but Faith with the knowledge of Him that abideth for ever, and it is to this higher knowledge that St. James wished to point his readers.

Science deals with the knowledge of things that change, as they change and of their changes. The physical facts that we have learned in the last years about that changeful body the sun are briefly these:—