When the constellations are compared with those nine chapters, several correspondences appear between the two; remarkable, when it is borne in mind how few are the events that can be plainly set forth in a group of forty-eight figures on the one hand, and how condensed are the narratives of those nine chapters on the other.
Look at the six southern constellations (see pp. [164], [165]) which were seen during the nights of spring in that distant time. The largest of these six is a great Ship resting on the southern horizon. Just above, a Raven is perched on the stretched-out body of a reptile. A figure of a Centaur appears to have just left the Ship, and is represented as offering up an animal on an Altar. The animal is now shown as a Wolf, but Aratus, our earliest authority, states that he did not know what kind of animal it was that was being thus offered up. The cloud of smoke from the Altar is represented by the bright coiling wreaths of the Milky Way, and here in the midst of that cloud is set the Bow—the bow of Sagittarius, the Archer. Is it possible that this can be mere coincidence, or was it indeed intended as a memorial of the covenant which God made with Noah, and with his children for ever?—"I do set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth."
Close by this group was another, made up of five constellations. Towards the south, near midnight in spring, the observer in those ancient times saw the Scorpion. The figure of a man was standing upon that venomous beast, with his left foot pressed firmly down upon its head; but the scorpion's tail was curled up to sting him in the right heel. Ophiuchus, the Serpent-holder, the man treading on the Scorpion, derives his name from the Serpent which he holds in his hands and strangles; the Serpent that, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, marked the autumnal colure. The head of Ophiuchus reached nearly to the zenith, and there close to it was the head of another hero, so close that to complete the form of the two heads the same stars must be used to some extent twice over. Facing north, this second hero, now known to us as Hercules, but to Aratus simply as the "Kneeler," was seen kneeling with his foot on the head of the great northern Dragon. This great conflict between the man and the serpent, therefore, was presented in a twofold form. Looking south there was the picture of Ophiuchus trampling on the scorpion and strangling the snake, yet wounded in the heel by the scorpion's sting; looking north, the corresponding picture of the kneeling figure of Hercules treading down the dragon's head. Here there seems an evident reference to the word spoken by God to the serpent in the garden in Eden: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her Seed; It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel."
THE MIDNIGHT CONSTELLATIONS OF SPRING, B.C. 2700.[ToList]
These two groups of star-figures seem therefore to point to the two great promises made to mankind and recorded in the early chapters of Genesis; the Promise of the Deliverer, Who, "Seed of the woman," should bruise the serpent's head, and the promise of the "Bow set in the cloud," the pledge that the world should not again be destroyed by a flood.
THE MIDNIGHT CONSTELLATIONS OF WINTER, B.C. 2700.[ToList]