Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades; literally, which maketh 'Ash' Kesil' and Kimah. The rendering of the LXX. ( ὁ ποιῶν πλειάδα καὶ ἕσπερον καὶ ἀρκτοῦρον), supported, as it is, by most of the other ancient versions and by the Targums, has caused the stellar character of these names to be generally recognized; but the exact meaning of each term is, to some extent, still a matter of dispute.
On the whole, it seems most probable that 'Ash, or 'Aish (Job 38:32), designates "the Great Bear," called by the Arabs Nahsh, while Kesil is the name of the constellation of Orion, and Kimah of that of the Pleiades.
The word 'Ash means "a litter," and may be compared with the Greek ἅμαξα and our own" Charles's Wain," both of them names given to the Great Bear, from a fancied resemblance of its form to that of a vehicle.
Kesil means "an insolent, rich man" (Lee); and is often translated by "fool" in the Book of Proverbs 14:16; Proverbs 15:20; Proverbs 19:1; Proverbs 21:20, etc. It seems to have been an epitheton usitatum of Nimrod, who, according to Oriental tradition, made war upon the gods, and was bound in the sky for his impiety—the constellation being thenceforth called "the Giant" (Gibbor)' or "the insolent one' (Kesil), and later by the Greeks "Orion" (comp.
Amos 5:8; and infra. Job 38:31). Kimah undoubtedly designates "the Pleiades." It occurs again, in connection with Kesil, in Job 38:31, and in Amos 5:8 The meaning is probably "a heap," "a cluster" (Lee); which was also the Greek idea: πλειάδες, ὅτι πλείους ὁμοοῦ κατὰ μίαν συναγωγήν' (Eustath; 'Comment.
in Hom. II.,' 18.488); and which has been also inimitably expressed by Tennyson in the line, "Like a swarm of dazzling fireflies tangled in a silver braid." And the chambers of the south. The Chaldeans called the zodiacal constellations "mansions of the sun" and "of the moon"; but these do not seem to be here intended.
Rather Job has in his mind those immense spaces of the sky which lie behind his southern horizon; how far extending, he knows not. Though the circumnavigation of Africa was not effected until about B.
C. 600, yet it is not improbable that he may have derived from travellers or merchants some knowledge of the Southern hemisphere.