Falling stars

It’s one of those things everyone knows: The Bible talks a lot about falling stars. It turns out it’s one of those things that everyone knows but is wrong.

There’s a single fallen star in Isaiah 14:12. Stars lose their brightness in various places (Ezekiel 32:7; Joel 2:109; 3:15). But in the Old Testament, there’s only one passage with falling stars: Daniel 8:10, when stars are displaced from the sky by a growing horn and then trampled underfoot.

Stars do fall more often in the New Testament. In fact, when Jesus alludes to Isaiah 13:10, He doesn’t say, as Isaiah does, “the stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light.” He speaks instead of stars “falling from heaven” (Matthew 24:29; Mark 13:25). This isn’t a misquotation; it’s a conflation of Isaiah 13 and Daniel 8:10 (perhaps with Isaiah 14:12 too). Whatever is happening in Matthew 24:29, it’s analogous to, or fulfills, both the prophecy against Babylon (Isaiah 13) and the warning about the horn knocking the stars from heaven (Daniel 8). Revelation 6:13 also speaks of stars falling from heaven to earth, elaborating with a comparison of the stars a fig tree that sheds its figs when shaken by a great wind.

What do we make of the relative absence of falling-star imagery in the Old Testament? We can begin to sort through this by noting that the stars represent Israel. Yahweh promised to multiple Abram like the stars, and in Numbers we see that fulfilled, not only in the sheer numbers of Israelites coming out of Egypt but also in the frequent overlap of their tribal numbers with astronomical cycles. Moses has just numbered the people a second time when he reminds Israel that they have become what Yahweh promised: As numerous as the stars of heaven (Deuteronomy 1:10; 4:19; 10:22; 28:62, this last a warning that they might be reduced in the future).

Elected as Yahweh’s people and house, Israel is lifted to heaven. They are like stars adorning Yahweh’s firmament, His house. And despite her many rebellions and failures, Israel remained in the heavens throughout the old covenant. Only with the coming of the new does she fall from heaven, shooting like stars across the darkening sky. That, it seems, is what Jesus is talking about and what John sees: Tis like another fall of man, as the Adamic people is shaken by the strong wing of the Spirit before they are entirely ripened.