It's time to address the name.
What it is, what it means, and why I chose it are certainly far from clear. Probably not the smartest branding move, but that's always been a major weakness of mine. But I chose it because it was significant to me, and now I'm going to share why.
It's found in Job 38:32 and no where else. It's a biblical hapax legomenon. In simplest terms it means constellations, or zodiac.
Zodiac refers to the constellations in the path (or just the path itself) the sun & moon travel through the sky. Which shifts over the course of the year. That shifting is the precession of the equinoxes, basically just a wobble in earth's rotation, which takes a 25,772 year cycle (at current rate, but the rate varies).
Israelites probably had some form of pre-Babylonian astronomy (as opposed to astrology) -- כְּסִיל Kesil refers to Orion, כִּימָה to Pleiades. It's the Babylonian Zodiac that persisted, into Western culture, and is reflected in part, in the Bible elsewhere. But the age of Job's composition means Mazzaroth likely references that pre-Babylonian astronomy, and seems to reference that whole zodiac. In this context Mazzaroth as zodiac may just allude to recognition of the precession of the equinoxes, noticeably progressing season by season. And may not allude to any Israelite astrology.
But that's not what makes it significant.
The significance stems from the curious fact that Libra is the only sign in the Babylonian zodiac that is not an animal or person.
It's a conspicuous little sign, a set of measuring scales sitting there in the "circle of little animals."
The constellation and it's representation of justice has always been there, known to the Sumerians and Babylonians. Associated with the justice administered by their gods. And the codification of the zodiac included Libra of course because the sun passes through it.
But it's an astrological sign because something had to represent the 30-degree segment of sky. 360 degrees had to be divided into 12. And so Libra was there and so it enters the canon.
That might sound vapid and obvious and applicable to all 12 signs, but you see, to the Seleucid Greeks, those stars were simply part of an adjacent constellation: they were Scorpio's claws.
But wait, astrology is occultic, forbidden, idolatrous and pseudoscience, right?
Well, yes. So let's turn our attention there. This is not an essay on astrology being real or true or not pseudoscience. It certainly is pseudoscience. How much truth is written in the stars, and at what level of granularity it's applicable to, is a debatable question which we could explore with scriptural support.
Many devoted Christ followers with strong knowledge of the scriptures believe and accept that God has indeed written truth in the stars, and that it is discernible to some extent, and also that pursuing your own discernment is precariously liable to fall into idolatry or demonic influence. And that's pretty much where I stand.
But I don't really know the answer, and I don't really know how I feel, so this article is not about that. This ain't no horoscope article.
But let's take some time to address this. Scripture forbids divination, soothsaying, and adjacent occultic practices, in a couple places. Fortune telling by horoscope seems to fall within that scope. Prophets expressed disdain for Babylonian astrologers.
But then we have things like King Saul consulting a necromancing medium to "bring up Samuel." And it worked. Of course, Saul is the antithetical embodiment of the type of king the Israelites would get, by demanding one, and not a theocratic foreshadowing of the messiah like David & Solomon. But be that as it may, almost no one was ever as holy & devout as Samuel, and there he is, in scripture, getting brought up.
So it's appropriately verboten, and it worked. Well of course. It wouldn't be forbidden if it didn't work.
We have other examples of biblical characters including Christ iconoclastically doing things they ostensibly are not supposed to do. Now we all know many cases someone might cite an example of someone doing something in the bible, as though any occurrence constitutes an endorsement. And of course that is patently ridiculous. Scores of occasions in scripture are not only unendorsed but tacitly repudiated, for their inclusion at all is as a moral lesson. But then we have Christ not washing his hands, or David eating consecrated bread.
And then we have clear apostolic New Testament allusions to truth prophetically stated in the stars. With this foreign Babylonian-Hellenistic zodiac in place as a decoder.
We'll get to that soon. But my point is, is astrology spiritually dangerous? Yes it is. Are all scriptural commandments established in a clear and consummate legal framework and the clear prescription for us is to legalistically adhere to it? Nah, in fast very much to the contrary, by the words of Christ and Paul. You probably already recognize that, and that's not what this article is about, so let's move on.
Seems like God's truth is in the stars. Star of Bethlehem would indicate so. But careful not to worship it, nor to worship the mysteries of God or your supposed ability to comprehend them.
So back to Scorpio's Claws. The Seleucid Greeks adopted Babylonian astrology and passed it forward to the West. Persia conquered Babylon. Alexander the Great conquered Persia, then died young and his empire split into 4. The Seleucids retained Mesopotamia and that's why by the time Rome took over, and the New Testament came on the scene, Koine Greek was the Lingua Franca. And subsequently apostolic evangelism to the gentiles are what carried the Hellenistically-tinged Christian culture forward into the West, down to we who speak English.
And that's significant to me because the Seleucids abandoned Scorpio's Claws and embraced Libra's scales of justice around the time of Christ's birth.
Mesopotamian & Greek cultural cross-pollination goes back to before Homer. But as the Babylonian zodiac crystallized, due to precession, the stars in Libra had diverged from the body of Scorpio too far to reasonably be considered one unit.
So the scorpion had claws, first materializing (in both Greek & Babylonian culture, most likely originating in Babylon) some time in the 700s BC. This was around the time that prophet Isaiah instructed Ahaz king of Judah to ask for a sign. But he refused to ask for a sign.
In Isaiah 7, God gives the sign in spite of Ahaz' refusal. A virgin will be with child. Now, of course virgin just means young girl, in Hebrew, and this sign's immediate purpose is to reassure Ahaz and the kingdom of Judah that the nation will thrive and be just fine, in the very recent future (within a handful of years), in spite of the threat of Assyria doing to Judah what it just did to Israel. Israel was destroyed, its people lost to history, replaced by the multi-ethnic Samaritans.
Sennacherib mounted a campaign through the Levant, laying siege to city after city (for the key to Assyria's dominance was their advanced siege techniques, using ramps, and collapsing walls by digging tunnels). But as the Bible and Sennacherib himself attests, he did not conquer Jerusalem, but rather saw his army wiped out from disease (attested in Isaiah and by Greek Herodotus).
The sign Ahaz refused, the virgin giving birth, proclaimed by God through Isaiah, around the time the scorpion had claws.
The scorpion possessed in its claws the stellar representation of the balance of justice: the sun is in what became Libra, when the days & nights are equal in length.
No, scratch that. Was. The sun was in Scorpio's Claws, Libra's Scales of Justice, at the autumnal equinox. At the time of God's proclamation. But then the equinox drifted out of that space in the sky due to precession and the inaccuracy of those old calendars.
The Scorpion's claws held justice no longer.
In fact justice became the severing of his claws.
The full embrace of the Babylonian zodiac with the scales of justice and a clawless scorpion propagated through the former Seleucid Greek empire after the Romans took over, right about the time of the birth of Christ.
And thus began the age of Pisces.
The striking and remarkable alignment of the astrological age of Pisces with the spread of Christianity to become the largest demographic religious plurality on earth is astounding.
Astrological ages last about 2,150 years. Since precession is a cycle lasting 25,000 years and change, there are no clear or specific demarcation lines between ages, and no authoritative body to delcare the actual boundaries. If you were to say Pisces began at Christ's birth, or resurrection, it would be as plausible as any other date, swinging about 75 years in either direction.
One way or another, Pisces is drawing to a close right now. Any time between about 1950 and the end of this century. Of course these changes are not an event. They are transitions. Transitions that extend longer than a human lifetime.
I don't know of any other clear, biblically symbolic alignments with astrological ages, except the exquisitely exciting prospect that we are entering into the age of Aquarius, the water-bearer, and presumably the fulfillment of the prophecy in Joel that God would pour out his spirit on all flesh, alluded to in the vision of tongue of fire above the heads of the early church on the day of Pentecost.
Also a widespread era of bull-worship did transpire during the age of Taurus. But that's about the most I can make out. But this is enough to touch on a couple very intriguing things.
I must stress I don't have high confidence in these following things. In all of the above, I am comfortably confident, at least to the extent that I find these things profoundly significant and they make up a significant portion of my awe and worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Author of Creation.
But to finish the thought on the severing of Scorpio's claws, I'd like to address why the scorpion would represent the dragon of Revelation 12 and not, you know, the dragon constellation, Draco.
Draco the constellation was not a dragon or anything serpentine in Babylon. The Arabs inherited Babylonian astronomy also and this constellation was a circle of mother camels protecting a foal.
The scorpion was part of Babylonian mythos. As well as two serpents. We now know them from the Greeks as Serpens and Hydra. They're both adjacent to Virgo.
Sorta.
If you look at the image above once more, Hydra's head (7 heads) is off frame. He would certainly be the longest serpentine constellation and thus would seem to be the best candidate for an enormous red dragon, but he's not particularly before the virgin about to give birth, poised to devour the child.
Serpens is. Tho he's smaller and seemingly less significant. His significance at all comes along with Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer, who is bearing him. Position-wise, seems like the dragon poised to devour the child, but significance-wise doesn't seem to fit the bill.
But that also seems less symbolic and significant than this malignant being getting declawed in poetic justice, so at first glance it's hard to get this stuff all to line up.
But we can piece scripture together with Babylonian-Hellenistic astronomy to paint a powerful picture.
Genesis 3:15 is the protoevangelium, the First Gospel. It prophesies the advent of Christ. Most focus is on the word for seed, which would ostensibly come from a man rather than a woman (who would instead have an egg) and so therefore would foreshadow the Virgin Birth (but Genesis 16:10 with Hagar also uses the same word, so this is actually spurious). But I want to focus on the word for "crush" -- יְשׁוּפְךָ֣
yə·šū·p̄ə·ḵā
"Crush" or "bruise" is an appropriate translation, but look closer and you'll see the same root word as in Yeshua.
But now get this: the serpent's retaliatory strike ain't the same word: תְּשׁוּפֶ֥נּוּ (tə·šū·p̄en·nū). Strong's concordance says they are, or at least that they have the same shuph root verb. And that the second & third person (who strikes, who is struck) is what differs. But they sure look different to me. Significantly different. And Scripture is filled with wordplay, alliteration and other literary devices intended to convey significance and meaning in the original language.
So Christ came to bruise Satan's head, yes. But it's still hard to line all this up with the stars. A scorpion is not a serpent.
But then that doesn't stop Christ from equating them:
"Snakes & Scorpions" might seem like just a rhetorical flourish to punctuate his point. But notice a few conspicuous things here. Notice the trampling, the treading, the foot upon the head.
And notice Satan falling from heaven. Remember in Revelation 12, that enormous red dragon sweeping a third of the stars out of the sky onto earth? Verse 9 names him specifically. He swept a third of the stars, but then later is hurled down himself.
So Satan = dragon. And serpent. But still not scorpion.
I think Scorpio is not Satan. I think Scorpio is Death, and not singular, but plural.
They also might be stars, that third of stars that were swept from the sky. Satan has been equated with a star, and that seems to be the reference here. They come from the Abyss but notice how they come down to the earth. And they may not actually be scorpions precisely but rather have tails like them, that can sting.
So if Scorpio's claws, capable of snatching you into death, were severed when Christ's advent was proclaimed, then it might seem that Scorprio is to be trampled. But of course we have clear passages of a serpent being trampled. We haven't even cited them all. Here's another:
Note the treading in verse 13. Two snakes, but no scorpions. Cobra and Serpent here are not a literary device. The cobra or adder is just a venomous snake. But the serpent here is Tannin, a sea monster (created on the Fifth Day) that is connected to a few other demonic principalities like Leviathan (government corruption & worship), Rahab (pride) and Behemoth (indulgence and discord). Tannin is chaos and evil. Tannin is sin.
It's no coincidence that there are two snakes, and I'm not letting go of my conviction that it's Scorpio's head getting crushed. Because just as there are two snakes, here in this Psalm there are two lions, one grown, one young.
"You sure about that?"
This is astounding.
But it's also very confusing. There are too many pieces to keep track of, the significance of each piece too great.
We need to take inventory. So let me itemize them.
Virgo, the woman giving birth, is not Mary. It's Eve. You'll see it as I explain the rest.
Serpens is the dragon, Satan. He is the adversary, the accuser.
Hydra is Tannin, the compounding effects of sin. There are always two serpents. Always. In Babylon. In the stars. In Psalm 91. And in Egypt, Pharoah's sorcerers produced two serpents in response to Aaron's staff turning into Tannin. (Incidentally, BTW, wood symbolizes Christ's crucifixion on the cross, whereby he took on the sins of the world (thus becoming sin, a serpent, and just as the brazen serpent was lifted up on a pole in the desert, so too must the Son of Man be lifted up)). Aaron's Tannin devoured both sorcerer's serpents, just as Christ taking on our sin precludes the compounding effects of our sin, as without Christ's substitutionary atonement we have no hope to atone for our sins, because of its multiplicative nature (the Mark of Cain promised vengeance 7 times over, but then Lamech declared retribution 77 times over, for even a lesser offense. And that's why Christ said to forgive not 7 times, but 77 times). Hence why every time one of Hydra's heads is severed, two more grow in its place.
I'm honestly still trying to figure out the meaning of Leo & Leo Minor. Lions symbolize power, and can be good or evil. But Psalm 91's declaration of God's deliverance for us so we will tread upon them, and their place in the heavens, confirm for me the accuracy of the rest of this mystery. The fact that God's deliverance means we don't need to strike our feet against stone (which is the immutable fatalism that is the nature of this fallen material world) has not escaped my notice.
Nor does the placement of the inconspicuous constellation Krater, beside Hydra. What was Krater? A cup used to water down wine. You might notice that Hydra's multiplying effects, precluded and prevented by Christ -- Hallelujah! -- still vainly attempt to water down and diminish the power of the blood. But it fails, and that's why Hydra has turned tail to escape.
So if Satan is a serpent, the first and singular serpent trying vainly to kill steal & destroy by deceiving us into the multiplying effects of sin, then that points to a few final and major pieces.
And I’ll unpack them in Part 2.