t influences of Pleiades
(_K[=i]mah_), or loose the bands of Orion?" (Job xxxviii. 31).

"Seek Him that maketh the seven stars (_K[=i]mah_) and Orion"
(Amos v. 8).

In our Revised Version, _K[=i]mah_ is rendered "Pleiades" in all three
instances, and of course the translators of the Authorized Version meant
the same group by the "seven stars" in their free rendering of the
passage from Amos. The word _k[=i]mah_ signifies "a heap," or "a
cluster," and would seem to be related to the Assyrian word _kimtu_,
"family," from a root meaning to "tie," or "bind"; a family being a
number of persons bound together by the very closest tie of
relationship. If this be so we can have no doubt that our translators
have rightly rendered the word. There is one cluster in the sky, and one
alone, which appeals to the unaided sight as being distinctly and
unmistakably a family of stars--the Pleiades.

The names _`Ash_, or _`Ayish_, _K[)e]s[=i]l_, and _K[=i]mah_ are
peculiar to the Hebrews, and are not, so far as we have any evidence at
present, allied to names in use for any constellation amongst the
Babylonians and Assyrians; they have, as yet, not been found on any
cuneiform inscription. Amos, the herdsman of Tekoa, living in the eighth
century B.C., two centuries before the Jews were carried into exile to
Babylon, evidently knew well what the terms signified, and the writer of
the Book of Job was no less aware of their signification. But the
"Seventy," who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, were not at
all clear as to the identification of these names of constellations;
though they made their translation only two or three centuries after the
Jews returned to Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah, when oral tradition
should have still supplied the meaning of such astronomical terms. Had
these names been then known in Babylon, they could not have been unknown
to the learned men of Alexandria in the second century before our era,
since at that time there was a very direct scientific influence of the
one city upon the other. This Hebrew astronomy was so far from being due
to Babylonian influence and teaching, that, though known centuries
before the exile, after the exile we find the knowledge of its technical
terms was lost. On the other hand, _k[=i]ma_ was the term used in all
Syriac literature to denominate the Pleiades, and we accordingly find in
the Peschitta, the ancient Syriac version of the Bible, made about the