Attos' Magazine
Volume #102, March/2010
Worlds In Collision
By Immanuel Velikovsky
Reference: Worlds in Collision, Immanuel Velikovsky, Buccaneer Books, NY, 1950, ISBN 0-89966-785-6.
Stones Suspended in the Air
“THE HOT HAILSTONES which, at Moses’ intercession, had remained suspended in the air when they were about to fall upon the Egyptians, were now cast down upon the Canaanites.” These words mean that a part of the meteorites of the cometary train of the days of Exodus remained in the celestial sphere for about fifty years, falling in the days of Joshua, in the valley of Beth-horon, on the same forenoon when the sun and the moon stood still for the length of a full day.
The language of the Talmud and Midrash suggests that the same comet returned after some fifty years. Once more it passed very close to the earth. This time it did not reverse the poles of the earth, but kept the terrestrial axis tilted for a considerable length of time. Again the world was, in the language of the rabbis, “consumed in the whirlwind,” “and all the kingdoms tottered,” “the earth quaked and trembled from the noise of thunder”; terrified mankind was decimated once more, and carcasses were like rubbish in this Day of Anger.
On the day when this took place on the earth, the sky was in confusion. Stones fell from the heavens, sun and moon stopped in their paths, and a comet must also have been seen. Habakkuk describes the portent in the sky on that memorable day when, in his words, “the sun and moon stood still in their habitation”: it had the form of a man on a chariot drawn by horses and was regarded as God’s angel.
In the King James version the passages read:
“His glory covered the heavens . . . and his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand . . . burning coals went forth at his feet . . . [he] drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered. . . . Was thine anger against the rivers? Was thy wrath against the sea, that thou didst ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salvation . . .? Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers. The mountains saw thee, and they trembled: the overflowing of the water passed by: the deep uttered his voice. . . The sun and moon stood still in their habitation: at the light of thy arrows they went, and at the shining of thy glittering spear. Thou didst march through the land in indignation, thou didst thresh the heathen in anger. . . . Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great waters.”
Since the texts of the Scriptures have, for some psychological reason rooted in the readers, the quality of being easily misread, misunderstood, or misinterpreted, I give also some of the passages of the third chapter of Habakkuk in another, modernized reading:
His splendour over all the sky,
his glory filling all the earth,
his radiance is a lightning blaze,
on either side flash rays. . .
At his step the earth is shaken,
at his look nations are scattered,
the ancient hills are shattered,
mountains of old sink low.
Art thou wrathful at the sea,
that thou art storming on the steeds,
upon the chariots in triumph . . . ?
The hills writhe at thy sight . . .
the sun forgets to rise,
the moon to move,
before the flashes of thy darting arrows,
before the sheen of thy lightning, thy lance.
Thou frampest earth in fury,
thou art threshing the peoples in thine anger.
With the earth disturbed in its spinning on its axis, the mechanical friction of displaced strata and magma must have set the world on fire.
The world burned. The Greek story of Phaëthon will be introduced here because of the interpretation heard by Solon during his visit to Egypt.
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