Mazzaroth

Among the questions put to Job comes a word found nowhere else in the Bible: “Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons…?” (Job 38:32). The Hebrew is mazzaroth, and the KJV simply kept it: “Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season?” No one knows for certain what it meant. By one view it means the constellations in general, as most modern versions translate; by another, the twelve signs of the zodiac; others take it for a single star group — the Bear, the Hyades or the Northern Crown.

The word is often linked with mazzalot, the “constellations” to which incense was burned near Jerusalem until King Josiah did away with their priests (2 Kings 23:5). In later Hebrew mazzal came to mean a sign of the zodiac, and also luck — hence the greeting mazal tov. The zodiac itself, twelve star signs along the sun’s yearly path, was worked out by Babylonian astronomers, in its full form by about the 400s BC. Isaiah mocks the stargazers of Babylon, “who monthly predict your fate” (Isaiah 47:13). Centuries later, synagogues such as Hammat Tiberias (4th century AD) and Beth Alpha (6th century) had zodiac wheels in their floor mosaics.