Why Does Job Say The Southern Stars Are In “Chambers”?

​I have been asked why Job refers to the southern stars as chambers. Here is that verse:

Job 9:9  Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.

​Job, in various passages, names all the northern constellations, but he refers to the southern skies as “chambers of the south”.

​The reason for this is that Job, and 90% of mankind today, lived in the northern hemisphere, and were not able to see the southern skie​s due to the curvature of the earth.

​The Hebrew word translated as “chambers” is ‘cheder‘, and it means a place that is out of the sight of others. Here are a few examples of how this word is used elsewhere in scripture:

Gen 43:30  And Joseph made haste; for his bowels did yearn upon his brother: and he sought where to weep; and he entered into his chamber, and wept there.

Jdg 15:1  But it came to pass within a while after, in the time of wheat harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid; and he said, I will go in to my wife into the chamber. But her father would not suffer him to go in.

2Sa 13:10  And Amnon said unto Tamar, Bring the meat into the chamber, that I may eat of thine hand. And Tamar took the cakes which she had made, and brought them into the chamber to Amnon her brother.

​Joseph went into his bedroom to weep, away from the eyes of his brothers and the Egyptians. Samson also wanted some private time with his wife, and Amnon certainly did not want King David to know that he was raping his own sister.

​There are other translations for this word, such as “inward parts”, as in this verse:

Pro 20:30  The blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil: so do stripes the inward parts [Hebrew:​ ‘cheder‘] of the belly.

​Here again this word refers to the things we know are there​, but we cannot see them, “the inward part of the belly”. So while there are other translations for this word, the meaning is the same, and the word ‘chamber’ or ‘chambers’ is by far the most common way of translating this word in the King James Version.

​I hope this helps you to see why Job refers to the northern constellations by name, and refers to the southern skies with the Hebrew word, ‘cheder‘, the out of sight “chambers of the south”.

YbitC, Mike