Bible Synapse
Should we look for signs in the heavens?
Hard question · Prophecy and its fulfilment · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
“Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven”; the nations’ idols are carved wood that cannot speak or walk.
Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.
God makes the lights in the sky to be “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years”.
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
Jesus foretells “fearful sights and great signs” from heaven.
And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.
There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars; when these begin, believers are to “look up, and lift up your heads”.
And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.
The objection
Jeremiah tells Israel not to be “dismayed at the signs of heaven” as the nations are (Jeremiah 10:2). Jesus says there will be “great signs” from heaven and “signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars”, and tells his followers to watch for them (Luke 21:11, 25–28). So should believers look for signs in the sky, or not?
The answer
Jeremiah forbids one particular use of the sky: the use ‘the heathen’ made of it. The nations around Israel read eclipses, comets and the movements of the stars as omens of their gods’ intentions, and lived in fear of them. Jeremiah goes straight on to ridicule their idols (10:3–5), and Isaiah taunts Babylon’s “astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators” (Isaiah 47:13). He is not saying that the heavens never serve as signs. The same Hebrew word for ‘signs’, ’ōtōt, is used in Genesis 1:14, where God made the lights of the sky ‘for signs’. His point is: do not be terrified by the stars as if they ruled your life; the Lord rules them.
Jesus foretells real events that God himself will bring about, not omens to be decoded by astrologers. And he tells his disciples not to react as the nations do. The nations will be in distress and perplexity, “Men’s hearts failing them for fear” (Luke 21:25–26), but believers are told “be not terrified” (21:9) and “look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh” (21:28). Both passages teach the same thing: God’s people are not to live in dread of what they see in the sky. John Gill already drew this distinction in his comment on Jeremiah 10:2.
From the classic commentators
by which are meant, not any extraordinary signs, such as are predicted in Joel 2:30, and by our Lord, as signs of the last destruction of Jerusalem, and of his coming, and of the end of the world, Matthew 24:3, but ordinary signs, which are no other than the sun, and moon, and starsJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on Jeremiah 10:2 (1746–1763)
Sources
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Jeremiah 10 (HelloAO)
- Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible: Luke 21 (1832), at Bible Hub