ut of the
north."

The Hebrew word here translated "north" is _mezar[=i]m_, a plural word
which is taken literally to mean "the scatterings." For its
interpretation Prof. Schiaparelli makes a very plausible suggestion. He
says, "We may first observe that the five Hebrew letters with which this
name was written in the original unpointed text could equally well be
read, with a somewhat different pointing, as _mizrim_, or also as
_mizrayim_, of which the one is the plural, the other the dual, of
_mizreh_. Now _mizreh_ means a winnowing-fan, the instrument with which
grain is scattered in the air to sift it; and it has its root, like
_mezarim_, in the word _zarah_, . . . which, besides the sense
_dispersit_, bears also the sense _expandit_, _ventilavit_."[263:1]

[Illustration: STARS OF THE PLOUGH, AS THE WINNOWING FAN.]

If Prof. Schiaparelli is correct in his supposition, then the word
translated "north" in our versions is literally the "two winnowing
fans," names which from the form suggested by the stars we may suppose
that the Jews gave to the two Bears in the sky, just as the Chinese
called them the "Ladles," and the Americans call them the "Big Dipper"
and the "Little Dipper." The sense is still that of the north, but we
may recognize in the word employed another Jewish name of the
constellation, alternative with _`Ash_ or _`Ayish_, or perhaps used in
order to include in the region the Lesser as well as the Greater Bear.
We should not be surprised at finding an alternative name for this great
northern constellation, for we ourselves call it by several different
appellations, using them indiscriminately, perhaps even in the course of
a single paragraph.

What to Job did the question mean which the Lord addressed to him:
"Canst thou guide the Bear and his sons?" To Job it meant, "Canst thou
guide this great constellation of stars in the north, in their unceasing
round, as a charioteer guides his horses in a wide circle, each keeping
to his proper ring, none entangling himself with another, nor falling
out of his place?"

What would the same question mean to us, if addressed to us to-day? In
the first place we might put it shortly as "Canst thou turn the earth on
its axis regularly and continuously, so as to produce this motion of the
stars round the pole, and to make day and night?" But modern astronomy
can ask the question in a deeper and a wider sense.

It was an ancient idea that the stars were fixed in