.A., _Job and Solomon_, p. 52.

CHAPTER IX

ARCTURUS

In two passages of the Book of Job a word, _`Ash_ or _`Ayish_, is used,
by context evidently one of the constellations of the sky, but the
identification of which is doubtful. In our Authorized Version the first
passage is rendered thus:--

(God) "Which maketh Arcturus (_`Ash_), Orion, and Pleiades,
and the chambers of the south";

and the second:--

"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades,
Or loose the bands of Orion?
Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season?
Or canst thou guide Arcturus (_`Ayish_) with his sons?
Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?
Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?"

The words (or word, for possibly _`Ayish_ is no more than a variant of
_`Ash_) here translated "Arcturus" were rendered by the "Seventy" as
"Arktouros" in the first passage; as "Hesperos" in the second passage;
and their rendering was followed by the Vulgate. The rendering Hesper or
Vesper is absurd, as "the sons" of Hesper has no meaning. "Arktouros"
is not improbably a misrendering of "Arktos," "the north," which would
give a free but not a literal translation of the meaning of the passage.
In another passage from Job (xxxvii. 9) where the south wind is
contrasted with the cold from another quarter of the sky, the
"Seventy"--again followed by the Vulgate--rendered it as "cold from
Arcturus." Now cold came to the Jews, as it does to us, from the north,
and the star which we know as Arcturus could not be described as
typifying that direction either now or when the Septuagint or Vulgate
versions were made. The Peschitta, the Syriac version of the Bible, made
about the second century after Christ, gives as the Syriac equivalent
for `Ash, or `Ayish, the word _`iy[=u]th[=a]_, but it also renders
_K[)e]s[=i]l_ by the same word in Amos v. 8, so that the translators
were evidently quite at sea as to the identity of these constellations.
We are also in doubt as to what star or constellation the Syrians meant
by _`Iy[=u]th[=a]_, and apparently they were in some doubt themselves,
for in the Talmud we are told that there was a disputation, held in the
presence of the great teacher Rabbi Jehuda, about 150 years after
Christ, whether _`Iy[=u]th[=a]_ was situated in the head of the Bull, or
in the tail of the Ram. Oriental scholars now assign it either to
Aldebaran in the head of the Bull, the "sons" bei