The constellations – are they good or bad?
He is the Maker of the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades
and the constellations of the south.
Job 9:9
The most majestic starry sky I have ever seen was in the middle of rural Zimbabwe on a dark night with no electricity to be found. The heavens were so clear that the Milky Way was easily visible. It was an awesome sight!
In the verse above, Job declared that God created specific clusters of stars. He quoted the names that ancient civilizations used. Did you know this was in the Bible? Naming constellations is thousands of years old, and was done by Sumerians, Mesopotamians, Babylonians and Greeks to name a few. Today there are 88 recognized constellations. Around half were named way back then, and the other half came later when constellations in the southern sky of the ancient world could be seen with better instruments.
We can all agree that the stars have been invaluable for maritime navigation since the very first boats were built. Giving groups of stars names just made sense to locate where you were and where you needed to go. Today, stars don’t really play a noticeable role in our lives. In fact, talk of stars and constellations is somewhat frowned upon in Christian circles because of astrology, signs of the Zodiac, and the daily horoscope that appears in most newspapers or online.
First, we need to acknowledge the obvious. God created the stars in the sky (Genesis 1:14-19). Not only that, Psalm 147:4 tells us that “He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name”. How amazing!
Perhaps it would be good to define and differentiate between astronomy and astrology. Astronomy is the scientific study of the celestial bodies and universe beyond the earth. Astrology is the study (not scientific) of how these celestial bodies supposedly influence the human world based on the month you were born. We know, of course, that only God influences the human world, and everyone and everything does His bidding – whether they realize it or not.
Let’s worship God, the Creator of stars, just as Amos did:
He who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns midnight into dawn and darkens day into night,
who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the land—the Lord is his name.
Amos 5:8