Part 17 (1/2)

”In that day the Lord with His sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.”

The marginal reading gives us instead of ”piercing,” ”crossing like a bar”; a most descriptive epithet for the long-drawn-out constellation of _Hydra_, the Water-snake, which stretched itself for one hundred and five degrees along the primitive equator, and ”crossed” the meridian ”like a bar” for seven hours out of every twenty-four. ”The crooked serpent” would denote the dragon coiled around the poles, whilst ”the dragon which is in the sea” would naturally refer to _Cetus_, the Sea-monster. The prophecy would mean then, that ”in that day” the Lord will destroy all the powers of evil which have, as it were, laid hold of the chief places, even in the heavens.

In one pa.s.sage ”the crooked serpent,” here used as a synonym of _leviathan_, distinctly points to the dragon of the constellations. In Job's last answer to Bildad the Shuhite, he says--

”He divideth the sea with His power, And by His understanding He smiteth through the proud. (R.V.

_Rahab_.) By His spirit He hath garnished the heavens; His hand hath formed the crooked serpent.”

The pa.s.sage gives a good example of the parallelism of Hebrew poetry; the repet.i.tion of the several terms of a statement, term by term, in a slightly modified sense; a rhyme, if the expression may be used, not of sound, but of signification.

Thus in the four verses just quoted, we have three terms in each--agent, action, object;--each appears in the first statement, each appears likewise in the second. The third statement, in like manner, has its three terms repeated in a varied form in the fourth.

Thus--

His power = His understanding.

Divideth = Smiteth through.

The sea = _Rahab_ (the proud).

And--

His spirit = His hand.

Hath garnished = Hath formed.

The heavens = The crooked serpent.

There can be no doubt as to the significance of the two parallels. In the first, dividing the sea, _i. e._ the Red Sea, is the correlative of smiting through _Rahab_, ”the proud one,” the name often applied to Egypt, as in Isa. x.x.x. 7: ”For Egypt helpeth in vain, and to no purpose: therefore have I called her Rahab that sitteth still.” In the second, ”adorning the heavens” is the correlative of ”forming the crooked serpent.” The great constellation of the writhing dragon, emphatically a ”crooked serpent,” placed at the very crown of the heavens, is set for all the constellations of the sky.

There are several references to _Rahab_, as ”the dragon which is in the sea,” all clearly referring to the kingdom of Egypt, personified as one of her own crocodiles lying-in-wait in her own river, the Nile, or transferred, by a figure of speech, to the Red Sea, which formed her eastern border. Thus in chapter li. Isaiah apostrophizes ”the arm of the Lord.”

”Art Thou not It that cut Rahab in pieces, That pierced the dragon?

Art Thou not It that dried up the sea, The waters of the great deep; That made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pa.s.s over?”

And in Psalm lx.x.xix. we have--

”Thou rulest the raging of the sea; When the waves thereof arise Thou stillest them.

Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces as one that is slain, Thou hast scattered Thine enemies with Thy strong arm.”

So the prophet Ezekiel is directed--

”Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and say unto him, thou wast likened unto a young lion of the nations: yet art thou as a dragon in the seas.”

In all these pa.s.sages it is only in an indirect and secondary sense that we can see any constellational references in the various descriptions of ”the dragon that is in the sea.” It is the crocodile of Egypt that is intended; Egypt the great oppressor of Israel, and one of the great powers of evil, standing as a representative of them all. The serpent or dragon forms in the constellations also represented the powers of evil; especially the great enemy of G.o.d and man, ”the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan.” So there is some amount of appropriateness to the watery dragons of the sky--_Hydra_ and _Cetus_--in these descriptions of _Rahab_, the dragon of Egypt, without there being any direct reference. Thus it is said of the Egyptian ”dragon in the seas,” ”I have given thee for meat to the beasts of the earth, and to the fowls of the heaven;” and again, ”I will cause all the fowls of the heaven to settle upon thee,” just as _Corvus_, the Raven, is shown as having settled upon _Hydra_, the Water-snake, and is devouring its flesh. Again, Pharaoh, the Egyptian dragon, says, ”My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself;” just as _Cetus_, the Sea-monster, is represented as pouring forth _Erida.n.u.s_, the river, from its mouth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANDROMEDA AND CETUS.]

But a clear and direct allusion to this last grouping of the constellations occurs in the Apocalypse. In the twelfth chapter, the proud oppressor dragon from the sea is shown us again with much fulness of detail. There the Apostle describes his vision of a woman, who evidently represents the people of G.o.d, being persecuted by a dragon.

There is still a reminiscence of the deliverance of Israel in the Exodus from Egypt, for ”the woman _fled into the wilderness_, where she hath a place prepared of G.o.d, that there they may nourish her a thousand two hundred and threescore days.” And the vision goes on:--

”And the serpent cast out of his mouth, after the woman water as a river, that he might cause her to be carried away by the stream. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the river which the dragon cast out of his mouth.”