my or host of heaven in another
sense, marshalled, like the stars, in perfect obedience to the Divine
will. So in the vision of Micaiah, the son of Imlah, the "host of
heaven" are the thousands of attendant spirits waiting around the throne
of God to fulfil His bidding.

"I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of
heaven standing by him on His right hand and on His left."

But more frequently it is the starry, not the angelic, army to which
reference is made.

So Jeremiah prophesies--

"As the host of heaven cannot be numbered,
Neither the sand of the sea measured:
So will I multiply the seed of David My servant,
And the Levites that minister unto Me."

The prophets of Israel recognized clearly, that the starry host of
heaven and the angelic host were distinct; that the first, in their
brightness, order, and obedience formed fitting comparison for the
second; but that both were created beings; neither were divinities.

The heathen nations around recognized also the hosts both of the stars
and of spiritual beings, but the first they took as the manifestations
of the second, whom they counted as divinities. There was often a great
confusion between the two, and the observance or worship of the first
could not be kept distinguished from the recognition or worship of the
other; the very ideogram for a god was an 8-rayed star.

The Hebrews were warned again and again lest, confusing in their minds
these two great hosts of stars and angels, they should deem the one the
divine manifestation of the other, the divinity, not accounting them
both fellow-servants, the handiwork of God.

Thus, in the wilderness, the Lord commands them through Moses--

"Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves, . . . lest thou
lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun,
and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven,
shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the
Lord thy God hath divided [distributed] unto all nations under
the whole heaven."

But the one celestial army continually suggests the other, and the two
are placed in the closest parallelism when reference is made to the time
when the foundations of the earth were fastened, and the corner stone
thereof was laid,

"When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy."

So when Deborah sings of the deliverance which th