THE MOON
"The balmy moon of blessed Israel
Floods all the deep-blue gloom with beams divine:
All night the splintered crags that wall the dell
With spires of silver shine."
So, in Tennyson's words, sang Jephthah's daughter, as she recalled the
days of her mourning before she accomplished her self-sacrifice.
It is hard for modern dwellers in towns to realize the immense
importance of the moon to the people of old. "The night cometh when no
man can work" fitly describes their condition when she was absent. In
sub-tropical countries like Palestine, twilight is short, and, the sun
once set, deep darkness soon covers everything. Such artificial lights
as men then had would now be deemed very inefficient. There was little
opportunity, when once darkness had fallen, for either work or
enjoyment.
But, when the moon was up, how very different was the case. Then men
might say--
"This night, methinks, is but the daylight sick;
It looks a little paler: 'tis a day,
Such as the day is when the sun is hid."
In the long moonlit nights, travelling was easy and safe; the labours
of the field and house could still be carried on; the friendly feast
need not be interrupted. But of all men, the shepherd would most rejoice
at this season; all his toils, all his dangers were immeasurably
lightened during the nights near the full. As in the beautiful rendering
which Tennyson has given us of one of the finest passages in the
_Iliad_--
"In heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart."
A large proportion of the people of Israel, long after their settlement
in Palestine, maintained the habits of their forefathers, and led the
shepherd's life. To them, therefore, the full of the moon must have been
of special importance; yet there is no single reference in Scripture to
this phase as such; nor indeed to any change of the moon's apparent
figure. In two cases in our Revised Version we do indeed find the
expression "at the full moon," but if we compare these passages with the
Authorized Version, we find them there rendered "in the time appointed,"
or "at the day appointed." This latter appears to be the literal
meaning, though there can be no question, as is seen by a comparison
with the Syriac, that the period of the full moon is referred to. No
doubt it was because travelling was so much more safe and easy than in
the moonless nights, that the two great spring and autumn festivals of
the Jews were held at the full moon. Indeed, the latter feast, when the
Israelites "camped out" for a week "in booths," was held at the time of
the "harvest moon." The phenomenon of the "harvest moon" may be briefly
explained as follows. At the autumnal equinox, when the sun is crossing
from the north side of the equator to the south, the full moon is
crossing from the south side of the equator to the north. It is thus
higher in the sky, when it souths, on each succeeding night, and is
therefore up for a greater length of time. This counterbalances to a
considerable extent its movement eastward amongst the stars, so that,
for several nights in succession, it rises almost at sundown. These
nights of the Feast of Tabernacles, when all Israel was rejoicing over
the ingathered fruits, each family in its tent or arbour of green
boughs, were therefore the fullest of moonlight in the year.[81:1]
Modern civilization has almost shut us off from the heavens, at least in
our great towns and cities. These offer many conveniences, but they
remove us from not a few of the beauties which nature has to offer. And
so it comes that, taking the population as a whole, there is perhaps
less practically known of astronomy in England to-day than there was
under the Plantagenets. A very few are astronomers, professional and
amateur, and know immeasurably more than our forefathers did of the
science. Then there is a large, more or less cultured, public that know
something of the science at secondhand through books. But the great
majority know nothing of the heavenly bodies except of the sun; they
need to "look in the almanack" to "find out moonshine." But to simpler
peoples the difference between the "light half" of the month, from the
first quarter to the last quarter through the full of the moon, and the
"dark half," from the last quarter to the first quarter, through new, is
very great. Indian astronomers so divide the month to this day.
In one passage of Holy Scripture, the description which Isaiah gives of
the "City of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel," there is a
reference to the dark part of the month.
"Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon
(literally "month") withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be
thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be
ended."
The parallelism expressed in the verse lies between the darkness of
night whilst the sun is below the horizon, and the special darkness of
those nights when the moon, being near conjunction with the sun, is
absent from the sky during the greater part or whole of the night hours,
and has but a small portion of her disc illuminated. Just as half the
day is dark because the sun has withdrawn itself, so half the nights of
the month are dark because the moon has withdrawn itself.
The Hebrew month was a natural one, determined by actual observation of
the new moon. They used three words in their references to the moon, the
first of which, _chodesh_, derived from a root meaning "to be new,"
indicates the fact that the new moon, as actually observed, governed
their calendar. The word therefore signifies the new moon--the day of
the new moon: and thus a month; that is, a lunar month beginning at the
new moon. This is the Hebrew word used in the Deluge story in the
seventh chapter of Genesis; and in all references to feasts depending on
a day in the month. As when the Lord spake to Moses, saying, "Also in
the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, and in the beginnings
of your months, ye shall blow with your trumpets over your burnt
offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings." And again
in the Psalm of Asaph to the chief musician upon Gittith: "Blow up the
trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast
day." This is the word also that Isaiah uses in describing the bravery
of the daughters of Zion, "the tinkling ornaments about their feet, and
their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, the chains, and the
bracelets." "The round tires" were not discs, like the full moon, but
were round like the crescent.
Generally speaking, _chodesh_ is employed where either reference is made
to the shape or newness of the crescent moon, or where "month" is used
in any precise way. This is the word for "month" employed throughout by
the prophet Ezekiel, who is so precise in the dating of his prophecies.
When the moon is mentioned as the lesser light of heaven, without
particular reference to its form, or when a month is mentioned as a
somewhat indefinite period of time, then the Hebrew word _yar[=e]ach_,
is used. Here the word has the root meaning of "paleness"; it is the
"silver moon."
_Yar[=e]ach_ is the word always used where the moon is classed among the
heavenly bodies; as when Joseph dreamed of the sun, the moon, and the
eleven constellations; or in Jer. viii. 2, where the Lord says that they
shall bring out the bones of the kings, princes, priests, prophets, and
inhabitants of Jerusalem, "and they shall spread them before the sun,
and the moon, and all the host of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom
they have served, and after whom they have walked, and whom they have
sought, and whom they have worshipped."
The same word is used for the moon in its character of "making
ordinances." Thus we have it several times in the Psalms: "He (the Lord)
appointed the moon for seasons." "His seed shall endure for ever, and
his throne as the sun before Me. It shall be established for ever as the
moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven." And again: "The moon and
stars rule by night;" whilst Jeremiah says, "Thus saith the Lord, Which
giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of
the stars for a light by night."
In all passages where reference seems to be made to the darkening or
withdrawing of the moon's light (Eccl. xii. 2; Isa. xiii. 10; Ezek.
xxxii. 7; Joel ii. 10, 31, and iii. 15; and Hab. iii. 11) the word
_yar[=e]ach_ is employed. A slight variant of the same word indicates
the month when viewed as a period of time not quite defined, and not in
the strict sense of a lunar month. This is the term used in Exod. ii. 2,
for the three months that the mother of Moses hid him when she saw that
he was a goodly child; by Moses, in his prophecy for Joseph, of "Blessed
of the Lord be his land . . . for the precious fruits brought forth by
the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the months." Such a
"full month of days" did Shallum the son of Jabesh reign in Samaria in
the nine and thirtieth year of Uzziah, king of Judah. Such also were the
twelve months of warning given to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon,
before his madness fell upon him. The same word is once used for a true
lunar month, viz. in Ezra vi. 15, when the building of the "house was
finished on the third day of the month Adar, which was in the sixth year
of the reign of Darius the king." In all other references to the months
derived from the Babylonians, such as the "month Chisleu" in Neh. i. 1,
the term _chodesh_ is used, since these, like the Hebrew months, were
defined by the observation of the new moon; but for the Tyrian months,
Zif, Bul, Ethanim, we find the term _yerach_ in three out of the four
instances.
In three instances a third word is used poetically to express the moon.
This is _lebanah_, which has the meaning of whiteness. In Song of Sol.
vi. 10, it is asked--
"Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the
moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?"
Isaiah also says--
"Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when
the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem,
and before His ancients gloriously."
And yet again--
"Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the
sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light
of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach
of His people, and healeth the stroke of their wound."
It may not be without significance that each of these three passages,
wherein the moon is denominated by its name of whiteness or purity,
looks forward prophetically to the same great event, pictured yet more
clearly in the Revelation--
"And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as
the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty
thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent
reigneth.
"Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to Him: for the
marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself
ready.
"And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine
linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the
righteousness of saints."
_Chodesh_ and _yar[=e]ach_ are masculine words; _lebanah_ is feminine.
But nowhere throughout the Old Testament is the moon personified, and in
only one instance is it used figuratively to represent a person. This is
in the case of Jacob's reading of Joseph's dream, already referred to,
where he said--
"Behold I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and
the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me."
And his father quickly rebuked him, saying--
"What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy
mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to
thee to the earth?"
Here Jacob understands that the moon (_yar[=e]ach_) stands for a woman,
his wife. But in Mesopotamia, whence his grandfather Abraham had come
out, Sin, the moon-god, was held to be a male god, high indeed among the
deities at that time, and superior even to Samas, the sun-god. Terah,
the father of Abraham, was held by Jewish tradition to have been an
especial worshipper of the moon-god, whose great temple was in Haran,
where he dwelt.
Wherever the land of Uz may have been, at whatever period Job may have
lived, there and then it was an iniquity to worship the moon or the
moon-god. In his final defence to his friends, when the "three men
ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes," Job,
justifying his life, said--
"If I beheld the sun when it shined,
Or the moon walking in brightness;
And my heart hath been secretly enticed,
And my mouth hath kissed my hand:
This also were an iniquity to be punished by the judges:
For I should have lied to God that is above."
The Hebrews, too, were forbidden to worship the sun, the moon, or the
stars, the host of heaven, and disobeyed the commandment both early and
late in their history. When Moses spake unto all Israel on this side
Jordan in the wilderness in the plain over against the Red Sea, he said
to them--
"The Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye
heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only
ye heard a voice. . . . Take ye therefore good heed unto
yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that
the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire:
"Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the
similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female. . . .
And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou
seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host
of heaven, shouldst be driven to worship them, and serve them,
which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the
whole heaven."
We know what the "similitude" of the sun and the moon were like among
the surrounding nations. We see their "hieroglyphs" on numberless seals
and images from the ruins of Nineveh or Babylon. That of the sun was
first a rayed star or disc, later a figure, rayed and winged. That of
the moon was a crescent, one lying on its back, like a bowl or cup, the
actual attitude of the new moon at the beginning of the new year. Just
such moon similitudes did the soldiers of Gideon take from off the
camels of Zebah and Zalmunna; just such were the "round tires like the
moon" that Isaiah condemns among the bravery of the daughters of Zion.
The similitude or token of Ashtoreth, the paramount goddess of the
Zidonians, was the _ashera_, the "grove" of the Authorized Version,
probably in most cases merely a wooden pillar. This goddess, "the
abomination of the Zidonians," was a moon-goddess, concerning whom
Eusebius preserves a statement by the Phoenician historian,
Sanchoniathon, that her images had the head of an ox. In the wars in
the days of Abraham we find Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with
him, smiting the Rephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim, that is, in the
Ashtoreths "of the horns." It is impossible to decide at this date
whether the horns which gave the distinctive title to this shrine of
Ashtoreth owed their origin to the horns of the animal merged in the
goddess, or to the horns of the crescent moon, with which she was to
some extent identified. Possibly there was always a confusion between
the two in the minds of her worshippers. The cult of Ashtoreth was
spread not only among the Hebrews, but throughout the whole plain of
Mesopotamia. In the times of the Judges, and in the days of Samuel, we
find continually the statement that the people "served Baalim and
Ashtaroth"--the plurals of Baal and Ashtoreth--these representing the
sun and moon, and reigning as king and queen in heaven. When the
Philistines fought with Saul at Mount Gilboa, and he was slain, they
stripped off his armour and put it "in the house of Ashtaroth." Yet
later we find that Solomon loved strange women of the Zidonians, who
turned his heart after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, and he
built a high place for her on the right hand of the Mount of Olives,
which remained for some three and a half centuries, until Josiah, the
king, defiled it. Nevertheless, the worship of Ashtoreth continued, and
the prophet Jeremiah describes her cult:--
"The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire,
and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of
heaven."
This was done in the cities of Judah and streets of Jerusalem, but the
Jews carried the cult with them even when they fled into Egypt, and
whilst there they answered Jeremiah--
"We will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our
own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to
pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and
our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of
Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty
of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. But since we left
off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out
drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have
been consumed by the sword and by the famine."
_Ashtoreth_, according to Pinches[90:1] is evidently a lengthening of
the name of the Assyrio-Babylonian goddess I[vs]tar, and the Babylonian
legend of the Descent of I[vs]tar may well have been a myth founded on
the varying phases of the moon. But it must be remembered that, though
Ashtoreth or I[vs]tar might be the queen of heaven, the moon was not
necessarily the only aspect in which her worshippers recognized her. In
others, the planet Venus may have been chosen as her representative; in
others the constellation Taurus, at one time the leader of the Zodiac;
in others, yet again, the actual form of a material bull or cow.
The Hebrews recognized the great superiority in brightness of the sun
over the moon, as testified in their names of the "greater" and "lesser"
lights, and in such passages as that already quoted from Isaiah (xxx.
26). The word here used for moon is the poetic one, _lebanah_. Of course
no argument can be founded on the parallelism employed so as to lead to
the conclusion that the Hebrews considered that the solar light exceeded
the lunar by only seven times, instead of the 600,000 times indicated by
modern photometric measurement.
In only one instance in Scripture--that already quoted of the moon
withdrawing itself--is there even an allusion to the changing phases of
the moon, other than that implied in the frequent references to the new
moons. The appointment of certain feasts to be held on the fifteenth day
of the month is a confirmation of the supposition that their months were
truly lunar, for then the moon is fully lighted, and rides the sky the
whole night long from sunset to sunrise. It is clear, therefore, that
the Hebrews, not only noticed the phases of the moon, but made regular
use of them. Yet, if we adopted the argument from silence, we should
suppose that they had never observed its changes of shape, for there is
no direct allusion to them in Scripture. We cannot, therefore, argue
from silence as to whether or no they had divined the cause of those
changes, namely that the moon shines by reflecting the light of the sun.
Nor are there any references to the markings on the moon. It is quite
obvious to the naked eye that there are grey stains upon her silver
surface, that these grey stains are always there, most of them forming a
chain which curves through the upper hemisphere. Of the bright parts of
the moon, some shine out with greater lustre than others, particularly
one spot in the lower left-hand quadrant, not far from the edge of the
full disc. The edges of the moon gleam more brightly as a rule than the
central parts. All this was apparent to the Hebrews of old, as it is to
our unassisted sight to-day.
The moon's influence in raising the tides is naturally not mentioned.
The Hebrews were not a seafaring race, nor are the tides on the coast of
Palestine pronounced enough to draw much attention. One influence is
ascribed to the moon; an influence still obscure, or even disputed. For
the promise that--
"The sun shall not smite thee by day,
Nor the moon by night,"
quite obvious in its application to the sun, with the moon seems to
refer to its supposed influence on certain diseases and in causing
"moon-blindness."
The chief function of the moon, as indicated in Scripture, is to
regulate the calendar, and mark out the times for the days of solemnity.
In the words of the 104th Psalm:--
"He (God) appointed the moon for seasons:
The sun knoweth his going down.
Thou makest darkness, and it is night;
Wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth.
The young lions roar after their prey,
And seek their meat from God.
The sun ariseth, they get them away,
And lay them down in their dens.
Man goeth forth unto his work
And to his labour until the evening.
O Lord, how manifold are Thy works!
In wisdom hast Thou made them all:
The earth is full of Thy riches."
FOOTNOTES:
[81:1] How the little children must have revelled in that yearly
holiday!
[90:1] T. G. Pinches, _The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical
Records of Assyria and Babylonia_, p. 278.
[Illustration: A CORNER OF THE MILKY WAY.
The "America Nebula": photographed by Dr. Max Wolf, at Heidelberg.]