Job 38:32

32. Mazzaroth Even at the time of the translation made by the Seventy, the meaning of this word was uncertain. It is now generally supposed to be the same as Mazzaloth, (“the planets,” 2 Kings 23:5,) or a mere variant form, and to stand for the (twelve) signs of the zodiac. The supposition that Mazzaloth and Mazzaroth are one word may be argued from the like termination, which is both plural and feminine, and from the interchangeableness of the liquids l and r in most languages; for instance, the Latin Parilia for Palilia, “the festival of Pales;” the Hebrew Tsahar and Tsahal, “to shine;” the Arabic Kalban and the Hebrew Kereb, “heart.” The division of the ecliptic (the apparent path of the sun) into twelve equal signs or constellations, called signs of the zodiac, is generally understood to be of great antiquity. The porticoes of the temples at Denderah and Esne bear representations of the zodiac which so markedly resemble the zodiacal figures of the ancient Hindus, Persians, Chinese, and Japanese, as to indicate that they had one common origin. The Greeks, however, evidently derived their ideas and arrangements of the zodiac from the Chaldees.

Other commentators, for instance Zockler (in Lange) and Dillmann, are led by a supposed etymology of the word (Mazzaroth) to fix upon some pre-eminently bright stars (for example, the planets Venus, Jupiter, Mars) which were conspicuous for their change of place in the sky. Canon Cook ( Speaker’s Com.) points to a very ancient word Masarati, probably derived from a similar hieroglyphic word, signifying the course or march of the Sun-god indicating “the milky way,” which was thought by the ancients to have “represented the course of the sun at a remote period the traces, so to speak, of his footsteps.” (See Rawlinson’s Ancient Mon., 2:574, sec. ed.: Layard’s Nineveh, 2:440; Greswell’s Fasti, 3:252-326; Maurice’s Hindostan, 1:272-359.)

Arcturus See note on Job 9:9. The pregnant question, Canst thou guide? may possibly contain an occult allusion, which none but Jehovah could make, to the diverging movement of these stars, according to which the nearest of “the Pointers” is swiftly approaching our earth, while the other is rapidly receding, in which motion the other five participate a supposed discovery that science has recently made. Proctor, Expanse, etc.. p. 295.

With his sons The three bright stars that form the tail of the Bear, which in some languages are fancifully deemed to be children following “the bier,” for such was the name the Arabs gave to the four leading stars of this constellation, which constitute a square. “The expression,” ( ‘hayish or ‘hash,) says Ideler, in his treatise on the names of the stars, “denotes particularly the bier on which the dead are borne, and, taken in this sense, each of the two biers (in the Ursa Major and Ursa Minor) is accompanied by three mourning women. The biers and the mourning women together are called Benat-n’ash, literally, daughters of the bier, that is, those who pertain to the bier.” Hitzig devotes a learned but exceedingly unsatisfactory note to his view that Mazzaroth is the morning star, and ‘hayish, Arcturus, is the evening star, thus adopting the rendering of the Septuagint, εσπερυς for עישׁ .