is
necessarily opposed to science.

There is a word used in Scripture to denote a reptilian monster, which
appears in one instance at least to refer to this dragon of eclipse, and
so to be used in an astronomical sense. Job, in his first outburst of
grief cursed the day in which he was born, and cried--

"Let them curse it that curse the day,
Who are ready (_margin_, skilful) to rouse up Leviathan.
Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark
Let it look for light, but have none;
Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning."

"_Leviathan_" denotes an animal wreathed, gathering itself in coils:
hence a serpent, or some great reptile. The description in Job xli. is
evidently that of a mighty crocodile, though in Psalm civ. leviathan is
said to play in "the great and wide sea," which has raised a difficulty
as to its identification in the minds of some commentators. In the
present passage it is supposed to mean one of the stellar dragons, and
hence the mythical dragon of eclipse. Job desired that the day of his
birth should have been cursed by the magicians, so that it had been a
day of complete and entire eclipse, not even the stars that preceded its
dawn being allowed to shine.

The astronomical use of the word _leviathan_ here renders it possible
that there may be in Isa. xxvii. an allusion--quite secondary and
indirect however--to the chief stellar dragons.

"In that day the Lord with His sore and great and strong sword
shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan
that crooked serpent; and He shall slay the dragon that is in
the sea."

The marginal reading gives us instead of "piercing," "crossing like a
bar"; a most descriptive epithet for the long-drawn-out constellation of
_Hydra_, the Water-snake, which stretched itself for one hundred and
five degrees along the primitive equator, and "crossed" the meridian
"like a bar" for seven hours out of every twenty-four. "The crooked
serpent" would denote the dragon coiled around the poles, whilst "the
dragon which is in the sea" would naturally refer to _Cetus_, the
Sea-monster. The prophecy would mean then, that "in that day" the Lord
will destroy all the powers of evil which have, as it were, laid hold of
the chief places, even in the heavens.

In one passage "the crooked serpent," here used as a synonym of
_leviathan_, distinctly points to the dragon of the constellations. In
Job's last answe