“The Maker of Pleiades and Orion, who restores morning from deep darkness and the day to the dark of night, who calls the sea to pour out over Earth. The Holy One is their name” (Amos 5.8).
On winter nights, this verse comes to mind often. Even this late in the season, the seven stars of the Pleiades and the large figure of Orion lie overhead after sunset. And as they travel across our sky, I am reminded of the stories told about them: the beautiful sisters and the great, boastful hunter. At least, I know the stories the Greeks and Romans told about them.
The Children of Israel were not stargazers. Certainly, lying atop their roofs or upon the ground on a warm night, they took in the beauty of the stars. But the Torah is very clear in its prohibition of divination, astrology amongst them. So, unlike other cultures, we’re not exactly sure what stories they told about the figures they saw above them. Or, for that matter, even what they named them.
The rendering of the Hebrew words in this verse as Pleiades and Orion is a best guess. We aren’t entirely certain that these are, in fact, the constellations Amos is referencing. These could very well be summer constellations or even some very different picture they saw in the Heavens Above than what has been passed down to us in the Greco-Roman tradition.
Thankfully, this doesn’t take away from the poetry of the verse or rob us of the grandeur of Creation to which Amos is pointing. But it does mean we don’t know the stories Ancient Israel told about the stars that shone overhead. No records or writings we currently have give us a hint of these lost myths. Perhaps they borrowed and transformed tales from neighboring countries. Or, maybe, they told different yarns in Samaria than in Judea. It’s possible the shapes they carved from the stars above were not at all like the ones we draw.
Whatever the stories that defined their skies, they were theirs and seeing these stars rise during certain seasons of the year brought to mind figures and events whose origins perhaps stretched back centuries. And they told them to their children, guiding their hands to trace pictures out of distant suns. Never imagining that one day they would be lost.
I’m not an expert on all the constellations or the stories around them. For now, though, I have them at my fingertips either in books or on the internet. There is still a way to remind myself of the tales that have been told of Orion the hunter.
But, one day, Orion may be as forgotten as whoever the Children of Israel knew. New tales will be told and perhaps new pictures will accompany them. Because we stopped telling them, the names we know will be lost from memory, as mysterious as what we find in Amos’ words.
Makes you wonder which stories are worth remembering and retelling. What, out of all the things competing for our recollection, is worth recounting? Who from those tales should we remember?
Whose name, do you think, we should not forget?
Holy One, your story is our story. We tell it over and over reminding ourselves not only of events and deeds but of you. Teach us to tell your story of love and wonder and hope so that your name might be known.