e of a great multitude, and as
the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty
thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent
reigneth.

"Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to Him: for the
marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself
ready.

"And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine
linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the
righteousness of saints."

_Chodesh_ and _yar[=e]ach_ are masculine words; _lebanah_ is feminine.
But nowhere throughout the Old Testament is the moon personified, and in
only one instance is it used figuratively to represent a person. This is
in the case of Jacob's reading of Joseph's dream, already referred to,
where he said--

"Behold I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and
the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me."

And his father quickly rebuked him, saying--

"What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy
mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to
thee to the earth?"

Here Jacob understands that the moon (_yar[=e]ach_) stands for a woman,
his wife. But in Mesopotamia, whence his grandfather Abraham had come
out, Sin, the moon-god, was held to be a male god, high indeed among the
deities at that time, and superior even to Samas, the sun-god. Terah,
the father of Abraham, was held by Jewish tradition to have been an
especial worshipper of the moon-god, whose great temple was in Haran,
where he dwelt.

Wherever the land of Uz may have been, at whatever period Job may have
lived, there and then it was an iniquity to worship the moon or the
moon-god. In his final defence to his friends, when the "three men
ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes," Job,
justifying his life, said--

"If I beheld the sun when it shined,
Or the moon walking in brightness;
And my heart hath been secretly enticed,
And my mouth hath kissed my hand:
This also were an iniquity to be punished by the judges:
For I should have lied to God that is above."

The Hebrews, too, were forbidden to worship the sun, the moon, or the
stars, the host of heaven, and disobeyed the commandment both early and
late in their history. When Moses spake unto all Israel on this side
Jordan in the wilderness in the plain over against the Red Sea, he said
to them--

"The Lord spake