The Pleiades and Orion: Names, Stars and the "Chains" of Job 38

The short verdict. The names "Pleiades" and "Orion" are Greek. Job uses different Hebrew names, and English Bibles inherited the Greek ones through a chain of translations. The identifications are old and widely accepted, but not certain, and neither are the key words "chains" and "cords". The astronomy in the popular claim is partly right, but the passage reads as poetry about God's power over the seasons. Verdict: Debated.

What the Bible says

Three passages name these stars together:

• Job 9:9: God "made the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the chambers of the south."
• Job 38:31–32: "Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead out the Mazzaroth in their season, or guide the Bear with its children?"
• Amos 5:8: "He who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning."

The popular claim says Job 38:31 shows knowledge that the Pleiades stars are held together by gravity while Orion's stars are drifting apart.

The Hebrew names

The English names in our Bibles are not the names Job used.

Kimah as the Pleiades is a strong identification, since "heap" suits a tight cluster. Kesil as Orion is also strong and very old. Ash and Mazzaroth remain genuinely uncertain.

Where the Greek names come from

• Pleiades. In Greek myth, the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. The word's origin is debated: from plein, "to sail", because their rising in spring opened the sailing season; from pleiones, "many"; or from their mother's name.
• Orion. A giant hunter of Greek myth. The origin of the name itself is uncertain.

Both appear already in Homer (Iliad 18, on the shield of Achilles) and in Hesiod's Works and Days (around 700 BCE), where the Pleiades and Orion mark the farming and sailing year: harvest when the Pleiades rise, ploughing when they set.

Other ancient peoples had their own names for the same stars. In Babylonian astronomy the Pleiades were MUL.MUL, simply "the stars", and Orion was "the True Shepherd of Anu". Egyptians knew Orion as Sah, linked to Osiris.

How the Greek names reached our Bibles

1. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (3rd–2nd century BCE), rendered Kimah as Pleias and Kesil as Orion.
2. The Latin Vulgate (Jerome, around 400 CE) carried Greek and Latin star names forward, though its choices differ between verses.
3. The King James Version (1611) gave English readers "Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades" (Job 9:9) and "the sweet influences of Pleiades… the bands of Orion" (Job 38:31). Most English translations since have kept the Greek names.

What the astronomy says

• The Pleiades are an open star cluster about 440 light-years away, roughly 100 million years old. Its stars move through space together, so "bound" is fair for now. But open clusters do not stay bound: astronomers expect the Pleiades to disperse over the next few hundred million years.
• Orion's belt is not a group at all. Its three stars sit at very different distances and only line up from our point of view, so "loosed" fits.

So the popular claim gets some astronomy right. The trouble is the text.

What the "chains" and "cords" really say

The claim depends on two words:

• Ma'adannot (rendered "chains" or "bonds") is rare and obscure. Some connect it to a root meaning "to bind"; others to 'adan, "delight", which is how the KJV arrived at "sweet influences".
• Moshekot ("cords" or "reins") is clearer, but describes leading or drawing rather than gravity.

Read in context, Job 38 is a series of questions God asks Job about the natural world: the sea, the dawn, snow, rain, the stars. The stars named here were the great seasonal markers of the ancient sky. The point is that God, not Job, controls the seasons and the heavens.

The bottom line

The passage does not need modern astronomy to be true. Its claim is about who rules the heavens, and that is a claim no telescope can test.

Sources and further reading

• David J. A. Clines, Job 38–42 (Word Biblical Commentary 18B; Thomas Nelson, 2011)
• G. R. Driver, "Two Astronomical Passages in the Old Testament," Journal of Theological Studies 4 (1953)
• Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 58b
• Alfred Rahlfs (ed.), Septuaginta (1935)
• Hesiod, Works and Days
• Hermann Hunger and David Pingree, Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia (Brill, 1999)
• Robert Burnham Jr., Burnham's Celestial Handbook, Vol. 3 (Dover, 1978)