ris3n's Apologetics Codex

Passage

Job 38.31-33

Job 38:31, Job 38:31-33, Pleiades and Orion, Kimah and Kesil

Book: Job · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Four star-names in two verses, then a question about the "ordinances of heaven." This is the densest astronomical passage in the Hebrew Bible, and it is a rhetorical challenge rather than a lesson: God is not telling Job about the sky, he is asking Job whether he can do anything with it. The passage is genuine evidence that its author watched the night sky closely and distinguished what he saw into kinds. It is not, on any responsible reading of the Hebrew, an anticipation of stellar dynamics, and the popular argument that it is has a short life in front of anyone with a lexicon. Both halves of that are worked out below.

Immediate context (±2 verses)

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ASV

29. Out of whose womb came the ice? And the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? 30. The waters hide themselves and become like stone, And the face of the deep is frozen.

31. Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades, Or loose the bands of Orion? 32. Canst thou lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season? Or canst thou guide the Bear with her train? 33. Knowest thou the ordinances of the heavens? Canst thou establish the dominion thereof in the earth?

  1. Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, That abundance of waters may cover thee? 35. Canst thou send forth lightnings, that they may go, And say unto thee, Here we are? (Job 38:29-35, ASV)
WEB

29. Out of whose womb came the ice? The gray frost of the sky, who has given birth to it? 30. The waters become hard like stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen.

31. “Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loosen the cords of Orion? 32. Can you lead the constellations out in their season? Or can you guide the Bear with her cubs? 33. Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you establish its dominion over the earth?

  1. “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, That abundance of waters may cover you? 35. Can you send out lightnings, that they may go? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are?’ (Job 38:29-35, WEB)
KJV

29. Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? 30. The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen. is: Heb. is taken

31. Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Pleiades: or, the seven stars: Heb. Cimah Orion: Heb. Cesil? 32. Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? Mazzaroth: or, the twelve signs guide: Heb. guide them 33. Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?

  1. Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover thee? 35. Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are? Here: Heb. Behold us? (Job 38:29-35, KJV)
YLT

29. From whose belly came forth the ice? And the hoar-frost of the heavens, Who hath begotten it? 30. As a stone waters are hidden, And the face of the deep is captured.

31. Dost thou bind sweet influences of Kimah? Or the attractions of Kesil dost thou open? 32. Dost thou bring out Mazzaroth in its season? And Aysh for her sons dost thou comfort? 33. Hast thou known the statutes of heaven? Or dost thou appoint Its dominion in the earth?

  1. Dost thou lift up to the cloud thy voice, And abundance of water doth cover thee? 35. Dost thou send out lightnings, and they go And say unto thee, 'Behold us?' (Job 38:29-35, YLT)

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Setting

  • Speaker: YHWH, answering Job out of the whirlwind (Job 38:1)
  • Audience: Job, with his three friends and Elihu present after their arguments have run out
  • Location: the land of Uz, unlocated in the text and traditionally placed east or southeast of Israel
  • Time period: patriarchal in setting, with the date of composition disputed across a wide range

The four names

The passage names four objects in two verses, which is more astronomical vocabulary than any other passage in the Hebrew Bible carries.

  • Kimah (כִּימָה), rendered Pleiades by nearly every tradition, including the Septuagint, the Targum, and the Vulgate line behind the English versions. The identification is on firm ground. Also at Job 9:9 and Amos 5:8.
  • Kesil (כְּסִיל), rendered Orion. The word's ordinary meaning in Hebrew is fool, which is why the identification, though traditional and reasonably well attested, is less certain than Kimah. Whatever it names, the text treats it as a different kind of object from Kimah.
  • Mazzaroth (מַזָּרוֹת), left untranslated by most English versions. Usually understood as the zodiacal constellations or the signs brought out in their season.
  • Ayish (עַיִשׁ), rendered "the Bear with her train" or "Arcturus with his sons," a group and its attendants.

The four names are not a list of synonyms. The author is sorting the night sky into distinguishable kinds of object and giving each its own name and its own behaviour, which is the mark of sustained observation rather than of borrowed vocabulary.

The grammar of the challenge

Verse 31 is a matched pair, and the match is what most popular readings of it miss.

  • 31a, hatqasher ma'adannot Kimah, "can you bind the ma'adannot of Kimah." Ma'adannot means bands or bonds.
  • 31b, o moshkot Kesil tefatteach, "or the moshkot of Kesil can you loose." Moshkot means cords or drawn things, from mashak, to drag or to draw.

The verbs differ, qashar to bind against pathach to loose. The nouns do not. The text gives Kesil cords of its own, exactly as it gives Kimah bands. This is synonymous parallelism, the standard Hebrew poetic device in which the second line restates the first in different words, and it is the shape of the whole speech: can you do this, or can you do its opposite, because you can do neither.

The rhetorical frame reinforces it. Verse 31 sits between "who fathered the drops of dew" and "can you send lightnings, that they may go," and it runs directly into "do you know the ordinances of heaven." Every line is an interrogative whose expected answer is no. The passage asserts nothing about the state of the Pleiades or Orion; it asserts something about Job.

Theological reading

The whirlwind speeches do not answer Job's question. They relocate it. Job has asked why he suffers, and God replies with roughly seventy questions about weather, geology, astronomy, and animals, none of which Job can answer. The argument is not that Job's complaint is illegitimate but that Job is not the kind of being who is positioned to adjudicate it.

The astronomy in verses 31 to 33 carries the point at its highest reach. The stars are the one part of creation that visibly runs on a schedule no human has ever touched, appearing and setting in their seasons whatever anyone does. Verse 33 names this directly: chuqqot shamayim, the ordinances or statutes of heaven, using the same word Hebrew uses for covenant statutes. The heavens keep decrees. Job does not issue them and cannot suspend them, and the God who does is the one he has been demanding an audience with.

Gregory the Great's Moralia in Job, the major patristic commentary on the book, reads the whirlwind speeches in exactly this register: God instructs Job by displaying the works of creation whose reasons Job cannot give, so that the limits of creaturely knowledge become the ground of trust rather than an obstacle to it.

Read alongside Psalm 19:1, "the heavens declare the glory of God," the passage belongs to the doxological rather than the evidential use of the sky. The night sky in scripture is a summons to worship and a rebuke to human self-importance, and it is doing both here.

What this passage does and does not establish

It does establish real observational literacy. Four distinct objects named and distinguished, a group with attendants, constellations that come out "in their season," and a conviction that the heavens run on fixed ordinances. That is an author who has watched the sky over years and thought about what he saw. Held at that level, the passage supports the argument of Bible Anticipates Science and pairs naturally with Laws of the Universe as Witness to Design.

It does not establish foreknowledge of stellar dynamics. A popular argument runs that Kimah gets the language of binding because the Pleiades are a gravitationally bound open cluster, while Kesil gets the language of loosing because Orion's bright stars lie at different distances and will drift apart. It does not survive contact with the text or with the astronomy.

  1. The Hebrew gives Orion cords too. As above, ma'adannot and moshkot are both binding-words. The contrast the argument needs is in the English verbs alone, not in the Hebrew line.
  2. The implicature runs backwards. One binds what is loose and loosens what is bound. Read as a factual claim rather than a challenge, 31a would imply the Pleiades are not bound and 31b would presuppose that Orion is, which is the reverse of what the argument wants.
  3. Orion's stars are not independent. Betelgeuse at roughly 550 light years, Rigel at roughly 860, and the Belt stars at roughly 1,200 to 2,000 do lie at different distances, but most of the bright members belong to the Orion OB1 association: formed from one molecular cloud, co-moving, gravitationally unbound but genuinely related. "They move independently" overstates it.
  4. The Pleiades are not permanently bound either. The cluster is expected to disperse in roughly 250 million years. Open clusters are bound now, not forever, so bound-versus-unbound is not even a categorical contrast.
  5. The identification of Kesil is traditional, not certain. An argument whose whole weight rests on Orion specifically is resting on the less secure of the two identifications.

The strong version costs more than it gains: a skeptic who knows one Hebrew word dismantles it in a sentence, and doing so in public damages the credibility of the sound arguments standing next to it. Run the observational-literacy reading and the doxological frame instead. See the Tier C discussion in Bible Anticipates Science.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word; see Lexicon Roadmap.

See also

Quoted in

Concepts:

Common questions this page answers

Q: Does Job 38:31 show the Bible knew the Pleiades were a bound star cluster and Orion was not?

No, and this argument should not be used. The Hebrew attaches a binding-word to both objects: 31a asks about the ma'adannot (bands) of Kimah and 31b about the moshkot (cords) of Kesil. The verbs differ but the nouns do not, which is ordinary synonymous parallelism rather than a contrast between a bound cluster and an unbound one. The astronomy does not cooperate either, since most of Orion's bright stars belong to the co-moving Orion OB1 association and the Pleiades themselves will disperse in roughly 250 million years.

Q: What do Kimah and Kesil mean in Hebrew?

Kimah is rendered Pleiades across the Septuagint, Targum, and Vulgate traditions, and that identification is secure. Kesil is rendered Orion, but the word's ordinary Hebrew meaning is "fool," and the constellation identification, while traditional and reasonably well attested, is less certain than Kimah. Both also appear together at Job 9:9 and Amos 5:8.

Q: What is Mazzaroth?

Mazzaroth is left untranslated in most English versions because its meaning is uncertain. It is usually understood as the zodiacal constellations or signs, which fits the verse's own phrase "in their season." The KJV margin offers "the twelve signs."

Q: Is Job 38:31-33 evidence for design?

Indirectly and modestly. The passage evidences an author with real observational knowledge of the night sky who believed the heavens run on fixed ordinances, which is the conviction that later made science possible and which Laws of the Universe as Witness to Design develops. It is not a scientific prediction, and pressing it as one weakens the case rather than strengthening it.

Q: What is God actually arguing in this passage?

Not astronomy. The verses sit inside roughly seventy rhetorical questions about creation whose expected answer is always no, and their function is to relocate Job's complaint rather than answer it. Verse 33 makes the point explicit: the heavens keep chuqqot, statutes, and Job neither issues them nor can suspend them.

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

  • ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
  • WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
  • KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
  • YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.