Job 31:26

26. The sun… the moon Traces of the worship of these bodies are found in the most ancient heathen religions. 2 Kings 17:16; 2 Kings 21:3; Psalms 19:0. “The first generation of men in Egypt,” says Diodorus Siculus, (book i, chapter 1,) “contemplating the beauty of the superior world, and admiring with astonishment the frame and order of the universe, supposed that there were two chief gods that were eternal, that is to say, the sun and the moon, the first of which they called Osiris and the other Isis, both names having proper etymologles: for Osiris, in the Greek language, signifies a thing with many eyes, which may be very properly applied to the sun, darting his rays into every corner, and, as it were, with so many eyes viewing and surveying the whole land and sea; with which agrees the poet

The sun from his lofty sphere all sees and hears.

… They hold that these gods govern the whole world, cherishing and increasing all things.” See also PLUTARCH’S Treatise Concerning Isis and Osiris, section 52. The Persians (B.C. about 523) conquered Egypt, and replaced, as far as lay in their power, the sculptural representations made by the Egyptians of their divinity Ra, (the sun,) by representations of their own divinity, of which the following figure is an illustration.

The sun in this is distinguished from the sun of the Egyptians by the absence of wings or asps, and more particularly by the want of the human figure or statue of the god, and by its sending forth a number of rays, each ending with a human hand. The ancient Egyptians worshipped the sun under the title of not only Ra or Re, but of Amun Ra, “the hidden” sun. The Papyri furnish extensive and important invocations and hymns to Ra and Amun Ra, illustrations of which may be seen in The Records of the Past, 2:117-136. The Nabataeans (commonly regarded as Arabs) worshipped the sun at “an altar constructed on the top of a house, pouring out libations and burning frankincense upon it every day.” Strabo, xvi, c. 4. section 26. “The astral character of the old Arabian idolatry,” says Rawlinson, “is indubitable.” (See his Herodotus, ii, p. 336.) In Egyptian hieroglyphics the idea of prayer was represented by a man holding up his hands accompanied by a star. The ancient Assyrians subordinated the worship of the sun (Shamas) to that of (Sin) the moon-god. (RAWLINSON’S Anc. Mon., 2:16, 17.) That the rising sun was also worshipped in Syria is affirmed by Tacitus, ( Hist., 3:24.) Such worship spread all over the world, and lasted in England even to the times of Canute, who, according to Dupuis, prescribed the form of worship to be rendered to the sun, etc. Evidences of this idolatry still linger in the names of the first two days of the week, Sun-day, Mon or Moon-day.

Walking in brightness Job dwells upon the dazzling beauty and great glory of these heavenly bodies as though they might be the sources of a subtle power to entice the affections of mortals. The Arabs have a proverb, “Take care of looking at the splendour of the stars.” Most forms of ancient idolatry certainly the worship of the powers of nature drifted into the grossest licentiousness, which may have been the chief reason that, in the days of Job, it was “punished by the judges.”