BIONUBTENTS (mon'O-ments), (Heb. 1?6, so' bek, copse), the incoru ct translation in Is. lxv:4, for "secret places," as in the R. V.
In general, they denote anything that brings the past to remembrance. The monuments among which idolaters lodged were either tombs or idol temples, by sleeping in which they hoped to have fellowship with the idol or the departed spirit in dreams and visions (Is. lxv :4).
NOON (moon), (Heb. 117, yaw-ray'akh, pale ness; leb-aw-navi, used figuratively in Is.
xxiv:23; xxx:26; Gr. creXivn, sel-ay'nay).
The worship of the heavenly bodies was among the earliest corruptions of religion, which would naturally take its rise in the eastern parts of the world, where the atmosphere is pure and trans parent, and the heavens as bright as they are glowing. In these countries the moon is of ex ceeding beauty. If the sun 'rules the day,' the moon has the throne of night, which, if less gor geous than that of the sun, is more attractive, be cause of a less oppressively brilliant light, while her retinue of surrounding stars seems to give a sort of truth to her regal state, and certainly adds not inconsiderably to her beauty.
(1) Early Worship. The moon was therefore worshiped as a goddess in the East at a very early period; in India under the name of Maja ; among the Assyrians as Mylitta ; with the Phcenicians she was termed Astarte or Ashteroth, who was also denominated the Syrian mother. The Greeks and Romans worshiped her as Artemis and Diana. Job (xxxi :26) alludes to the power of the moon over the human soul : `If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness, and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand; this also were an iniquity, for I should have denied the God that is above.' The moon, as being mistress of the night, may well have bcen considered as the lesser of the two great lights of heaven (Gen. i :16). It was ac cordingly regarded in the old Syrian superstition as subject to the sun's influence, which was wor shiped as the active and generative power of na ture, while the moon was reverenced as the passive and producing power. The moon, accordingly,
was looked upon as feminine. Herein Oriental usage agrees with our own. But this usage was by no means universal.
(2) Egyptian Conception. The Egyptians represented their moon as a male deity, lhoth ; and Wilkinson (Anc. Egypt. v:5) remarks that 'the same custom of calling it male is retained in the East to the present day, while the sun is con sidered feminine, as in the language of the Ger mans. lhoth, in the character of Lunus, the moon, has sometimes a man's face, with the cres cent of the moon upon his head supporting a disk. Plutarch says the Egyptians 'call the moon the mother of the world, and hold it to be of both sexes; female, as it receives the influence of the sun ; male, as it scatters and disperses through the air the principles of fecundity.' In other countries also the moon was held to be hermaphrodite. An other pair of dissimilar qualities was ascribed to the moon—the destructive and the generative faculty—whence it was worshiped as a bad as well as a good power.
(3) Queen of Heaven. The epithet 'queen of heaven' (Horace, siderum regina) appears to have been very common. Nor was it, any more than the worship of the moon, unknown to the Jews, as may be seen in a remarkable passage in Jere miah (xliv :17), where the Israelites (men and women, the latter exert most influence) appear given over to this species of idolatry : 'We will certainly burn incense to the queen of heaven, and pour out drink-offerings unto her, as we have done, we and our fathers ; for then had we plenty of victuals, and we were well, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, we have wanted all things.' The last verse of the passage adds to the burnt-offerings and drink-offerings, 'cakes to worship her.' Vows were also made by the Jews to the moon, which superstition required to be fulfilled (verse 25).