The Astronomy of the Bible Part 4

Who can number the clouds by wisdom, Or who can pour out the bottles of heaven?"

The Hebrews, therefore, were quite aware that the waters of the sea were drawn up into the atmosphere by evaporation, and were carried by it in the form of clouds. No doubt their knowledge in this respect, as in others, was the growth of time. But there is no need to suppose that, even in the earlier stages of their development, the Hebrews thought of the "waters that be above the heavens" as contained in a literal cistern overhead. Still less is there reason to adopt Prof. Schiaparelli's strange deduction: "Considering the spherical and convex shape of the firmament, the upper waters could not remain above without a second wall to hold them in at the sides and the top. So a second vault above the vault of the firmament closes in, together with the firmament, a s.p.a.ce where are the storehouses of rain, hail, and snow."[43:1] There seems to be nowhere in Scripture the slightest hint or suggestion of any such second vault; certainly not in the beautiful pa.s.sage to which Prof.

Schiaparelli is here referring.

"Where is the way to the dwelling of light, And as for darkness, where is the place thereof; That thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, And that thou shouldst discern the paths to the house thereof.

Hast thou entered the treasuries of the snow, Or hast thou seen the treasuries of the hail, Which I have reserved against the time of trouble, Against the day of battle and war?

By what way is the light parted, Or the east wind scattered upon the earth?

Who hath cleft a channel for the water-flood, Or a way for the lightning of the thunder;

Hath the rain a father?

Or who hath begotten the drops of dew?

Out of whose womb came the ice?

And the h.o.a.ry frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?"

The Song of David, Psalm xviii., clearly shows that its writer held no fantasy of a solidly built cistern of waters in the sky, but thought of the "dark waters" in the heavens, as identical with the "thick clouds."

The pa.s.sage is worth quoting at some length, not merely as supplying a magnificent word picture of a storm, but as showing the free and courageous spirit of the Hebrew poet, a spirit more emanc.i.p.ated than can be found in any other nation of antiquity. It was not only the gentler aspect of nature that attracted him; even for its most terrible, he had a sympathy, rising, under the influence of his strong faith in G.o.d, into positive exultation in it.

"In my distress I called upon the Lord, And cried unto my G.o.d: He heard my voice out of His temple, And my cry before Him came into His ears.

Then the earth shook and trembled, The foundations also of the mountains moved And were shaken, because He was wroth.

There went up a smoke out of His nostrils, And fire out of His mouth devoured: Coals were kindled by it.

He bowed the heavens also, and came down; And thick darkness was under His feet.

And He rode upon a cherub, and did fly: Yea, He flew swiftly upon the wings of the wind.

He made darkness His hiding place, His pavilion round about Him; Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.

At the brightness before Him His thick clouds pa.s.sed, Hailstones and coals of fire.

The Lord also thundered in the heavens, And the Most High uttered His voice; Hailstones and coals of fire.

And He sent out His arrows, and scattered them; Yea lightnings manifold, and discomfited them.

Then the channels of waters appeared, And the foundations of the world were laid bare, At Thy rebuke, O Lord, At the blast of the breath of Thy nostrils.

He sent from on high, He took me; He drew me out of many waters.

He delivered me from my strong enemy, And from them that hated me, for they were too mighty for me."

Two other pa.s.sages point to the circulation of water vapour upward from the earth before its descent as rain; one in the prophecy of Jeremiah, the other, almost identical with it, in Psalm cx.x.xv. 7: "When He uttereth His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and He causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; He maketh lightnings for the rain, and bringeth forth the wind out of His treasuries." Here we get a hint of a close observing of nature among the Hebrews. For by the foreshortening that clouds undergo in the distance, they inevitably appear to form chiefly on the horizon, "at the ends of the earth," whence they move upwards towards the zenith.

A further reference to clouds reveals not observation only but acute reflection, though it leaves the mystery without solution. "Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of Him Which is perfect in knowledge?" There is a deep mystery here, which science is far from having completely solved, how it is that the clouds float, each in its own place, at its own level; each perfectly "balanced" in the thin air.

"That mist which lies in the morning so softly in the valley, level and white, through which the tops of the trees rise as if through an inundation--why is _it_ so heavy? and why does it lie so low, being yet so thin and frail that it will melt away utterly into splendour of morning, when the sun has shone on it but a few moments more? Those colossal pyramids, huge and firm, with outlines as of rocks, and strength to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery flanks--why are _they_ so light--their bases high over our heads, high over the heads of Alps? why will these melt away, not as the sun rises, but as he descends, and leave the stars of twilight clear, while the valley vapour gains again upon the earth like a shroud?"[46:1]

The fact of the "balancing" has been brought home to us during the past hundred years very vividly by the progress of aerial navigation.

Balloons are objects too familiar even to our children to cause them any surprise, and every one knows how instantly a balloon, when in the air, rises up higher if a few pounds of ballast are thrown out, or sinks if a little of the gas is allowed to escape. We know of no balancing more delicate than this, of a body floating in the air.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CIRRUS FROM SOUTH KENSINGTON, 1906, MAY 29.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: c.u.mULI FROM TUNBRIDGE WELLS, 1906, MAY 20.

(Photographs of clouds, taken by Dr. W. J. S. Lockyer.)

"Dost thou know the balancing of the clouds?"]

"The spreadings of the clouds," mentioned by Elihu are of the same nature as their "balancings," but the expression is less remarkable. The "spreading" is a thing manifest to all, but it required the mind both of a poet and a man of science to appreciate that such spreading involved a delicate poising of each cloud in its place.

The heavy rain which fell at the time of the Deluge is indeed spoken of as if it were water let out of a reservoir by its floodgates,--"the windows of heaven were opened;" but it seems to show some dulness on the part of an objector to argue that this expression involves the idea of a literal stone built reservoir with its sluices. Those who have actually seen tropical rain in full violence will find the Scriptural phrase not merely appropriate but almost inevitable. The rain does indeed fall like hitherto pent-up waters rushing forth at the opening of a sluice, and it seems unreasonable to try to place too literal an interpretation upon so suitable a simile.

There is the less reason to insist upon this very matter-of-fact rendering of the "windows of heaven," that in two out of the three connections in which it occurs, the expression is certainly used metaphorically. On the occasion of the famine in the city of Samaria, Elisha prophesied that--

"To-morrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria. Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of G.o.d, and said, Behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, might this thing be?"

So again Malachi exhorted the Jews after the Return from Babylon:--

"Bring ye all the t.i.thes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in Mine house, and prove Me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."

In neither case can the "windows of heaven" have been meant by the speaker to convey the idea of the sluice-gates of an actual, solidly-built reservoir in the sky.

One other cloud fact--their dissipation as the sun rises high in the heavens--is noticed in one of the most tender and pathetic pa.s.sages in all the prophetic Scriptures. The Lord, by the mouth of Hosea, is mourning over the instability of His people. "O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? For your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away."

The winds of heaven were considered as four in number, corresponding to our own four "cardinal points." Thus the great horn of Daniel's he-goat was broken and succeeded by four notable horns toward the four winds of heaven; as the empire of Alexander the Great was divided amongst his four generals. In Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones the prophet prays, "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain;" and Jeremiah foretells that "the four winds from the four quarters of heaven" shall be brought upon Elam, and scatter its outcasts into every nation.

The circulation of the winds is clearly set forth by the Preacher in the Book of Ecclesiastes.

"The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits."

Of the four quarters, the Hebrews reckoned the east as first. It was to the east that they supposed themselves always looking. The chief word for east, therefore, _kedem_, means "that which is before," "the front"; and the word next in use is, naturally, _mizrach_, the rising of the sun. The west is, as naturally, _mebo ha.s.shemesh_, the going down of the sun; but as the Mediterranean Sea lay to the westward of Palestine "the sea" (_yam_) is frequently put instead of that point of the compa.s.s. With the east in front, the south becomes the right, and the north the left. The south also was _negeb_, the desert, since the desert shut in Palestine to the south, as the sea to the west. In opposition to _tsaphon_, the dark or hidden north, the south is _darom_, the bright and sunny region.

The phrase "four corners of the earth" does not imply that the Hebrews thought of the earth as square. Several expressions on the contrary show that they thought of it as circular. The Lord "sitteth upon the circle of the earth," and in another pa.s.sage the same form is applied to the ocean. "He set a compa.s.s (_margin_ circle) upon the face of the depth."

This circle is no doubt the circle of the visible horizon, within which earth and sea are spread out apparently as a plain; above it "the vault of heaven" (Job xxii. 14; R.V. _margin_) is arched. There does not appear to be allusion, anywhere in Scripture, to the spherical form of the earth.

The Hebrew knowledge of the extent of the terrestrial plain was of course very limited, but it would seem that, like many other nations of antiquity, they supposed that the ocean occupied the outer part of the circle surrounding the land which was in the centre. This may be inferred from Job's statement--

"He hath described a boundary upon the face of the waters, Unto the confines of light and darkness."

The boundary of the world is represented as being "described," or more properly "circ.u.mscribed," drawn as a circle, upon the ocean. This ocean is considered as essentially one, exactly as by actual exploration we now know it to be;--"Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place;"--all the oceans and seas communicate.

Beneath the earth there are the waters. The Lord hath founded the world "upon the seas, and established it upon the floods," and (Psalm cx.x.xvi.

6) "stretched out the earth above the waters." This for the most part means simply that the water surface lies lower than the land surface.

But there are waters,--other than those of the ocean,--which are, in a strict sense, beneath the earth; the subterranean waters, which though in the very substance of the earth, and existing there in an altogether different way from the great ma.s.ses of water we see upon the surface, form a water system, which may legitimately be termed a kind of ocean underground. From these subterranean waters our springs issue forth, and it is these waters we tap in our wells. Of the cedar in Lebanon Ezekiel spoke: "The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running round about his plants, and sent out her little rivers (_margin_, conduits) unto all the trees of the field." The "deep,"

_tehom_, applies therefore, not merely to the restless waters of the ocean, but to these unseen waters as well; and means, not merely "surging waters," but depths of any kind. When in the great Deluge the floodgates of heaven were opened, these "fountains of the great deep were broken up" as well. And later both fountains and windows were "stopped." So the Lord asks Job, "Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast thou walked in the search of the depth?" and in Proverbs it is said of the Lord, "By His knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew."

The tides upon the sea-coast of Palestine are very slight, but some have seen a reference to them in Jer. v. 22 where the Lord says, I "have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pa.s.s it: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pa.s.s over it." More probably the idea to be conveyed is merely that of the restraint of the sea to its proper basin, as in the pa.s.sage where the Lord asks Job, "Who shut up the sea with doors when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?" And the writer of Proverbs sums all up:--

"When He prepared the heavens I [Wisdom] was there: when He set a compa.s.s upon the face of the depth: when He established the clouds above: when He strengthened the fountains of the deep: when He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters should not pa.s.s His commandment: when He appointed the foundations of the earth."

FOOTNOTES:

[41:1] _Astronomy in the Old Testament_, p. 33 note.