Pleiades

Last night, I opened up my skylight and went star-gazing. The night was so clear that the orange glow of Barlick-town did little to impede my vision. Very clear was Pleiades, a cluster of stars to which Orion’s Belt points. By the naked eye, there are seven stars close together, though telescopic perusal will show several more. This cluster is exceedingly beautiful, glistening in the darkness like diamonds on black velvet. The ancients sometimes knew it as the Seven Sisters and it sits in the constellation of Taurus.

The cluster is mentioned at least three times in scripture. Job proclaims in 9:9: ‘He made the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, And the chambers of the south’.

In 38:31, the LORD asks of Job “Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades…?”

Surprisingly, the third reference is from the prophet Amos (5:8), who invokes the stars to call Israel to repent, by inviting them to consider the Creator’s splendour:

He made the Pleiades and Orion;

He turns the shadow of death into morning

And makes the day dark as night;

He calls for the waters of the sea.

In Revelation 2, the glorified Lord Jesus is described as having ‘in His right hand seven stars’, which later transpire to be the angels of the seven churches. As Pleiades has more than seven stars, I’m not convinced by the link, but the idea that this beautiful, if discreet, star cluster is a picture of Christ’s Church is appealing indeed. 

The image is in the public domain and was solely created by NASA on 1 June 2004. Credit: NASA/ESA/AURA/Caltech