ESSAY
Its Lamp is the Lamb: The Diminishing Rule of the Celestial Bodies

The act of naming carries a lot of weight in the Bible. Naming denotes authority and possession; the namer signifying that he understands the thing named, and therefore possesses the requisite wisdom to rule over it. God set the stage for naming when he named the domains during the first three days of creation: day/night, heaven, and earth/seas. After that, God sovereignly delegated the naming of the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens to the man he had created, so that he should have authority over them. When the woman was created, the man named her twice: She was the first woman, and she was his wife Eve. He was her authority as federal head of creation and as covenant head in their marriage. Naming, therefore, plays a significant role in the creation account.

The ubiquity of naming in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 highlights a glaring omission, a break in the pattern. “And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars” (Genesis 1.16). Why doesn’t God name the lights? Why doesn’t he direct Adam to name the lights? They have names, of course, later on, but this is more than a matter of signifying terms. The lights are cast as rulers in their own stead, regent kings much like Adam. In the creation account they pass unnamed.

Among the few commentators who ask the question, the answer is the same: the luminaries are unnamed in Genesis 1 to demonstrate that they are not deities. The Hebrew words shemesh (sun) and yareah (moon) are closely related to the names of pagan gods worshiped by the nations. This reasoning fails for several reasons:

First, the name used for God in Genesis 1, Elohim, was also the term used to refer to the pantheon of Canaanite gods. If the author wanted to direct worship to the true God alone, why not use his personal name in Genesis 1, as he does in Genesis 2?

Second, this is not the way Moses or the other Old Testament authors interact with pagan deities and myths. Rather than avoiding or downplaying pagan associations, the authors of the Old Testament lean into them, conscripting and assimilating language, names, and stories to display Yahweh’s glory. One example of this in Genesis 1 is the possible wordplay between tahom, the deep, and Tiamat, the primordial dragon-goddess in the Babylonian creation myth. Moses frequently draws in aspects of pagan worship in order to show Yahweh’s supremacy over the gods of the nations around Israel. There is no trace of sheepishness concerning pagan names in the Old Testament (The story of Esther is case in point here, where Esther shares her name with Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love, and Mordecai with Marduk, the king of the gods). Third, naming is an activity of dominion. If Moses were concerned that his reader’s takeaway might be to worship the sun and moon, it would be better to present them as named and “domesticated” than not named at all. As we’ve seen, the failure to name the sun and moon draws attention toward them, rather than away from them, in the creation account.

To Rule the Day and the Night

Why are the sun and moon unnamed in Genesis 1? Perhaps God intended that Adam should name them, as Adam named the beasts of the fields, the birds of the heavens, and his wife Eve. But naming, as has been said, is a dominion activity. Surely mankind’s rule doesn’t extend to the stars. Even if we indulge in wildly speculative, science fiction-esque thinking about mankind’s coming dominion, there will be no sun or moon (typologically, at least) in the eschaton, having been replaced by the light of the Lamb (Revelation 21.23). Nevertheless, I believe this is close to the truth. The celestial bodies are unnamed just as the man is unnamed: they are rulers of their respective spheres, and therefore undomesticated. Yet unlike mankind (Revelation 5.10) their rule is not eternal; we’ve already seen that in Revelation 21. The sun and moon must make way for the fullness of human rule, that is, the rule of the God-Man Jesus.

To see how this is so, we have to examine how it is that the heavenly lights “rule.” And Genesis tells us: they give light; they separate day and night; and they serve as signs for appointed times, days, and years.

The celestial bodies signify Israel’s appointed times, that is, Israel’s feasts. Israel’s calendar, unlike the Gregorian calendar we use, was lunisolar. The beginning of the year was marked by the sun, and each month of the year by the moon. Four of Israel’s feasts were tied to the phase of the moon (Passover, Unleavened Bread, Trumpets, and Booths), and two of the others counted from Passover (Firstfruits, Weeks). The Day of Atonement seems to be Israel’s only solar feast, being roughly tied to the autumnal equinox. In this way, the sun and moon “ruled” the times of the Israelites. Each festival was celebrated on a timetable determined by these celestial bodies. The sun, being the greater light, also determined Israel’s daily sacrifices (Exodus 29.38–29). As a perpetual offering, the priests were to sacrifice one lamb every morning, and one every evening. The sun acted as the metronome for Israel’s priesthood (and thus for the whole nation), directing its twice-daily sacrifices. In addition, then, to giving light upon the earth, the heavenly bodies “ruled” Israel by setting the rhythms for daily and yearly rituals which were the center of Jewish religious life.

There is an aspect of Israel’s time that is not dictated by the sun and moon. The 6+1 pattern of the Sabbath is, from this point of view, an “arbitrary” unit of time, as it does not conform to the celestial clock but rather commemorates God’s work in creation. And being in this way arbitrary, the Sabbath week reminds God’s people that ultimately, behind the turning wheel of the sun, Yahweh directs and orders their days. The Sabbath is uniquely “God-time” not only in that it is to be set apart for the worship of Yahweh but because it is uniquely governed by Yahweh, without intermediaries.

The Coming of the Son of Man

Jesus, when he came into the world, was born of a woman, and born under the law. He was doubly under the authority of the celestial luminaries. But he also came into the world as the second Adam, the one given dominion over all the work of God’s hands, and made lower than the heavenly beings for just a little while (Psalm 8.5–6). In his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus fulfilled Israel’s feasts. In his death, he fulfills the system of morning and evening sacrifice. These feasts may still be celebrated in a New Covenant fashion, but they have taken on a similar significance as the Sabbath: the timing of these events is tied to the work of Christ rather than the sun or moon. Sun and moon together surrendered their timekeeping authority to Christ. As a result, the only commanded observance remaining is the Sabbath. In the Son of Man, the Lord of the Sabbath, God-time is the time.

In the present age, the sun and moon still discharge their office as luminaries. They separate the day and the night, and they give light upon the earth. But someday these functions, too, will be handed over to the Son of Man when he comes in his glory. Christ will judge the nations, and the righteous will reign in courts of everlasting day while the wicked are cast into outer darkness. In the New Heaven and the New Earth, the celestial bodies will finally be able to lay their burden down. The New Jerusalem will have “no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Revelation 21.23).


Daniel Stanley is the Director of the School of Discipleship in Spring Creek, PA.

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