and his party traveled from Ur to Haran, which was another major center of moon worship. Abraham’s father, Terah, who died in Haran, apparently practiced such idolatrous worship. (Gen. 11:31, 32) In any case these circumstances add weight to the significance of Joshua’s warning to Israel prior to their entry into the Promised Land, as recorded at Joshua 24:2, 14: “This is what Jehovah the God of Israel has said, ‘It was on the other side of the River [Euphrates] that your forefathers dwelt a long time ago, Terah the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, and they used to serve other gods.’ And now fear Jehovah and serve him in faultlessness and in truth, and remove the gods that your forefathers served on the other side of the River and in Egypt, and serve Jehovah.”

Job also lived among moon worshipers and he faithfully rejected their practice of kissing the hand to the moon. (Job 31:26-28) The neighboring Midianites used moon-shaped ornaments, even placing them on their camels. (Judg. 8:21, 26) In Egypt, where both Abraham and later the people of Israel resided, moon worship was prominently practiced in honor of the moon-god Thoth, the Egyptian god of measures. Every full moon the Egyptians sacrificed a pig to him. He came to be worshiped in Greece under the title of Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes Thrice Greatest). Moon worship, in fact, extended all the way to the western hemisphere, where ancient ziggurat temples dedicated to the moon have been found in Mexico and Central America. Note, too, that in English the second day of the week still derives its name from the Anglo-Saxon worship of the moon, Monday originally meaning “moon-day.”

The moon worshipers attributed powers of fertility to the moon and looked to it to make their crops and even their animals grow. In Canaan, where the Israelites finally settled, the worship of the moon was carried on by the Canaanite tribes with the accompaniment of immoral rites and ceremonies. There the moon was sometimes worshiped under the symbol of the goddess Ashtoreth (Astarte). Ashtoreth was said to be the female consort of the male god Baal, and the worship of these two frequently ensnared the Israelites during the period of the Judges. (Judg. 2:13; 10:6) King Solomon’s foreign wives brought the contamination of moon worship into Judah. Foreign-god priests directed the people of Judah and Jerusalem in making sacrificial smoke to the sun, moon and stars, a practice that continued until King Josiah’s time. (1 Ki. 11:3-5, 33; 2 Ki. 23:5, 13, 14) When Jezebel, the daughter of the pagan king Ethbaal who ruled the Sidonians, married King Ahab of Israel she also brought with her the worship of Baal and, apparently, of the moon-goddess Ashtoreth. (1 Ki. 16:31) The Israelites again met up with moon worship during their exile in Babylon, where the times of the new moons were considered propitious by the Babylonian astrologers for making forecasts of the future.—Isa. 47:12, 13.

God’s Word should have served as a protection for the Israelites against such moon worship. It showed the moon to be simply a luminary and a convenient time indicator, but devoid of personality. (Gen. 1:14-18) At the time of their approaching Canaan Jehovah specifically warned the nation of Israel that they should not worship him as being represented by his heavenly creations. Anyone practicing such worship was to be stoned to death. (Deut. 4:15-19; 17:2-5) By his prophet Jeremiah, God later declared that whether they were kings, priests, prophets or of the common people, such ones should become as “manure upon the face of the ground.”—Jer. 8:1, 2.

Some have tried to read into the text at Deuteronomy 33:14 an evidence of pagan influence or a superstitious attitude toward the moon. In the Authorized Version this text speaks of the “precious things put forth by the moon.” However, as more modern translations show, the sense of the word “moon” here is actually “months” or “lunar months” and basically refers to the monthly periods in which the fruits ripen.

Similarly, Psalm 121:6 has been held by some to indicate a belief in the idea of illness caused by exposure to the moonlight. By reading the entire Psalm, however, it becomes evident that such assumption is unfounded, since the Psalm rather expresses in poetical form the assurance of God’s protection against adversity’s stroke under all circumstances and at all times, whether in the sunlit day or the moonlit night.

Still others have taken exception to the term “lunatick” found in the Authorized Version at Matthew 4:24 and Matthew 17:15. This expression comes from the Greek word se·le·ni·aʹzo·mai and literally means “stricken by the moon.” In modern translations it is rendered by the word “epileptic.” Matthew’s use of this common Greek term for an epileptic on these two occasions does not mean that he attributed such illness to the moon nor that the Bible so teaches, but simply indicates that he used the word that was evidently, among Greek-speaking people of that time, the currently understood name for an epileptic. In this regard, we might note that the term “lunacy” is today primarily a legal term used by the courts to designate a degree of insanity, even though they do not attribute such insanity to the effects of the moon. Christians today similarly continue to use the name Monday for the second day of the week even though they do not view it as a day sacred to the moon.

IN THE COMMON ERA

In the days of Christ Jesus and the apostles, moon worship was not in practice among the Jewish people. They did, of course, observe the new moons in accord with the Law covenant. The new moon of each month is still observed by Orthodox Jews as a minor day of atonement for sins committed during the month just ended.

Nisan 14, when the moon was approaching fullness, marked the time of the celebration of the Passover and also the time of the initiation by Jesus of the memorial supper or the Lord’s Evening Meal in memory of his death.—Matt. 26:2, 20, 26-30; 1 Cor. 11:20-26.

With the entrance of the new covenant, replacing the Law covenant, some of the Jewish Christians, as well as others, tended to hold to the practice of the celebration of the new moons as well as of the sabbath days, as shown by Paul’s corrective counsel at Colossians 2:16, 17 and Galatians 4:9-11.

MORDECAI

(Morʹde·cai) [like pure myrrh or bruised myrrh].

1. One who returned to Jerusalem and Judah in 537 B.C.E. after the seventy years of exile in Babylon. (Ezra 2:1, 2) Mordecai was a prominent Israelite and leader who assisted Zerubbabel and was distinguished in the initial genealogical enrollment of the reestablished community in Judah.—Neh. 7:5-7.

2. “The son of Jair the son of Shimei the son of Kish a Benjaminite” (Esther 2:5), an older cousin and guardian of Esther. (Esther 2:7) Mordecai is portrayed solely in the Bible book of Esther. The book recounts his prominent part in the affairs of the Persian Empire during the years of approximately 484 to 474 B.C.E. Evidence points to him as the writer of the book of Esther.

Some doubt the authenticity of the book or that Mordecai was a real person. Their objection, that he would have to be at least 120 years old and have a beautiful cousin 100 years younger, is based on the erroneous assumption that Esther 2:5, 6 denotes that Mordecai went into captivity to Nebuchadnezzar along with King Jeconiah. However, the Bible’s purpose in this text is, not to recount Mordecai’s history, but to give his lineage. Kish may have been Mordecai’s great-grandfather, or even an earlier ancestor who was “taken into exile.” Another view, harmonious with Biblical expression, is that Mordecai, though