Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
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nature, place, magnitude, motions, or influences; for the scriptures were written, not to gratify our curiosity and make us astronomers, but to lead us to God, and make us saints. Now these lights are said to rule (Ge 1:16,18); not that they have a supreme dominion, as God has, but they are deputy-governors, rulers under him. Here the less light, the moon, is said to rule the night; but in Ps 136:9 the stars are mentioned as sharers in that government; The moon and stars to rule by night. No more is meant than that they give light, Jer 31:35. The best and most honourable way of ruling is by giving light and doing good: those command respect that live a useful life, and so shine as lights.
2. Learn from all this,
(1.) The sin and folly of that ancient idolatry, the worshipping of the sun, moon, and stars, which, some think, took rise, or countenance at least, from some broken traditions in the patriarchal age concerning the rule and dominion of the lights of heaven. But the account here given of them plainly shows that they are both God's creatures and man's servants; and therefore it is both a great affront to God and a great reproach to ourselves to make deities of them and give them divine honours. See De 4:19.
(2.) The duty and wisdom of daily worshipping that God who made all these things, and made them to be that to us which they are. The revolutions of the day and night oblige us to offer the solemn sacrifice of prayer and praise every morning and evening.
The "greater light" is a type of Christ, the "Sun of righteousness" Malachi 4:2. He will take this character at His second advent. Morally the world is now in the state between; Genesis 1:3-16; Ephesians 6:12; Acts 26:18; 1 Peter 2:9. The sun is not seen, but there is light. Christ is that light John 1:4,5,9 but "shineth in darkness," comprehended only by