SUN, Sol. This is the great Luminary that God created at the Beginning, to preside over the Day,1 as also he created the Moon to preside over the Night. The Sun has always been the Object of Worship and Adoration to the greatest Part of the People of the East. We think it to be the Sun that the Phenicians worshipp’d under the Name of Baal, and the Moabites under the Name of Chemosh, and the Ammonites by that of Moloch, and the Israelites by the Name of Baal, and of the King of the Host of Heaven. They did not separate his Worship from that of the Moon, whom they call’d Astarta, and the Queen of Heaven. They pay’d this Worship upon High-places, in Groves, and upon the Roofs of their Houses. Moses gave the Israelites Caution against this Worship: Take ye Deut. iv. 19.therefore good heed unto yourselves, — lest thou lift up thine Eyes unto Heaven, and when thou seest the Sun, and the Moon, and the Stars, even all the Host of Heaven, shouldst be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all Nations under the whole Heaven. Elsewhere he condemns to Death Deut. xvii. 3, 4, 5.those that shall be perverted to the Worship of strange Gods, of the Sun, or of the Moon. 2 Kings xxiii. 11.Josiah King of Judah took away out of the Temple of the Lord, the Horses, and burn’d the Chariots, that the Kings his Predecessors had consecrated to the Sun. Job says, that Job xxxi. 26, 27, 28,he look’d upon it as a very great Crime, and as renouncing the God that is Above, to kiss his Hand as a Token of Adoration, when he saw the Sun in all its Beauty and Splendour. Ezek. viii. 16.Ezekiel saw in the Spirit, in the Temple of the Lord, five and twenty Men of Judah, who turn’d their Backs upon the Sanctuary, and had their Faces towards the East, worshipping the Sun at his rising.
The Sun furnishes Matter to the greatest Part of the noble Similitudes, that the sacred Authors make use of. To represent a very great Calamity, an extraordinary Misfortune, they say the Sun was obscured, and the Moon withdrew her Light2. They did not believe that the Sun went round about the Earth, or that the Earth turn’d about its own Axis to the Sun; but they imagin’d when the Sun came to its setting, it return’d to the Place of its rising by some unknown Eccles. i. 5, 6.Way. See our Dissertation upon the System of the World, according to the antient Hebrews, printed before the Commentary upon Ecclesiasticus. The Scripture acquaints us with three very extraordinary and miraculous Accidents that happen’d to the Sun. The first was, when it stood still at the Command Josh. x. 12, 13. 2 Kings xx. 11.of Joshua. The second, when it return’d back in the Time of King Hezekiah. And the third was, when it was involved in Darkness, tho’ the Moon was then in the Full, at the Time of our Saviour’s Crucifixion.Matth. xxvii. 45.
Psal. lxxi. 1.To express a long Continuance of any thing that is glorious and illustrious, in Scripture Stile it is said, it shall continue as long as the Sun endures. For Example, it is said of the Reign of the Messiah, Permanebit cum sole, & ante lunam. And elsewhere, that his Throne is as durable as the Psalm lxxxviii. 38. Isai. xxx. 26.Sun; Thronus ejus sicut sol. That under his happy Dominion, the Light of the Moon shall be equal to that of the Sun, and that of the Sun shall be seven times more than ordinary. Jesus Christ is call’d the Sun of Mal. iv. 2.Righteousness; Orietur vobis sol justitiæ.
The Compass of the whole Earth is Psal. xlix. mark’d out by those Words: From the ris- 1. cvi. 3.
cxii. 3, &c. ing of the Sun, to the going down of the same: Or rather, from East to West. To be hung upon a Gibbet in the Eyes of the Sun; to be exposed in the Fields to the Numbers Birds of the Air, to the Heat of the Sun, xxv. 4. Jer.
viii. 2. Bar. expresses a particular Degree of Ignominy ii. 25.. I have beheld all that is done under the Sun, or in the World: A Woman Eccles. i. cloathed with the Sun, and the Moon un- 14, &c. Rev. xii. 1.der her Feet, is the Church personated.
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