selēnē

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• Both are darkened together as cosmic signs of judgment and the coming day of the Lord.Mat 24:29Act 2:20Rev 6:12
• Both are heavenly lights whose brightness God renders unnecessary in the new creation, which has need of neither.Rev 21:23
• Both are heavenly bodies that differ from each other in glory, each with its own kind of radiance.1Co 15:41

• The sun is a source of scorching heat that withers plants and burns people, and its power to scorch is repeatedly in view.Mat 13:6Jas 1:11Rev 7:16Rev 16:8
• The sun measures the rhythm of the day, its rising and setting marking morning and evening.Mrk 1:32Mrk 16:2

• The moon never appears alone. It is always the night's counterpart to the sun, named in the same breath with it, so that when the sun is darkened the moon withholds its light, and the city that needs no sun needs no moon either.Mrk 13:24Luk 21:25Rev 21:23
• The moon has a single visible face, large enough to change color rather than simply go out: it is said to turn to blood before the great day comes.Act 2:20Rev 6:12

• Both are lights God set in the sky, and both are ranked by brightness rather than treated as equals: the sun has one glory, the moon another, the stars another, and even one star differs from another.1Co 15:41
• Both fail together when the end is announced: in the same sentence the moon stops giving its light while the stars fall from the sky, and a third of each is struck so that the night loses its light.Mat 24:29Rev 8:12
• Both can be worn by a figure in a vision, furniture of the sky arranged around a person: the woman is clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.Rev 12:1

• A star can be one light singled out of many and followed: the visitors from the east see "his star" rise, ask when it appeared, and watch it settle over the place where the child was.Mat 2:2Mat 2:7Mat 2:9Mat 2:10
• Stars are countable, so they can be held in a hand, numbered, and reduced by a fraction: seven of them in the right hand of the one who speaks, and a third of them swept down by the dragon's tail.Rev 1:16Rev 1:20Rev 3:1Rev 12:4
• One star on its own can act, be named, and be given something to do: a great star falls burning on the rivers and is called "Wormwood", and another fallen star receives the key to the shaft of the pit.Rev 8:10Rev 8:11Rev 9:1
• Because stars are many and each one is small, a star also stands for a person: the seven stars are the messengers of the seven assemblies, false teachers are "wandering stars", and Jesus calls himself the bright morning star.Rev 2:1Rev 2:28Jud 1:13Rev 22:16

• Names the physical light overhead, bright enough that its glory can be measured against the sun and the stars.1Co 15:41Rev 21:23
• Goes dark, turns the color of blood, or is struck when the New Testament pictures the day of the Lord, so it carries the language of cosmic upheaval and not of the festival calendar.Mat 24:29Mrk 13:24Act 2:20Rev 6:12Rev 8:12
• Works as a visible image in a vision, an object a reader can picture standing under someone's feet.Rev 12:1
• Appears alongside the sun and the stars as one of the lights whose behavior signals what is coming.Luk 21:25

• Both words turn on the moon, which is why English uses "moon" in rendering each of them: one is the moon itself, the other the day its cycle begins.Col 2:161Co 15:41
• Each names something the New Testament treats as provisional: the monthly observance is called a shadow of what has now come in Christ, and the moon itself is no longer needed to light the city of God.Col 2:16Rev 21:23

• Names a day on the calendar rather than anything in the sky: the opening of a month, kept as a fixed observance.Col 2:16
• Belongs to a list of religious practices, set beside food, drink, yearly festivals and Sabbaths as something believers were being judged for keeping.Col 2:16

• It names the thing that shines, not the shining. When the text wants to speak of what the moon sends out, it has to reach for a second word: its own glow, or its own particular brightness measured against the sun's and the stars'.Mat 24:291Co 15:41
• It is one fixed object in the sky, so it can be counted off in a list beside the sun and the stars, and can be placed in a picture as something a figure stands on.Luk 21:25Rev 12:1
• Being an object, it can be damaged and still be itself: darkened, turned the color of blood, struck in part. That alteration is exactly what makes it a warning sign of the end.Act 2:20Rev 6:12Rev 8:12

• In the plural this word can cover exactly the class of thing the moon is. God is called the Father of the heavenly lights, and the moon is one of those, holding a brightness of its own alongside the sun's.Jas 1:171Co 15:41
• Both are finally made unnecessary by God himself. The new city has no need of the moon to shine in it, because God's own glory has lit it, and the light the nations then walk by is that glory rather than any lamp or sun.Rev 21:23Rev 21:24Rev 22:5

• It names the brightness itself, from any source at all: the daylight a walker sees his way by, the glow of a lamp on its stand, the glare of a courtyard fire a man warms himself at.Jhn 11:9Luk 11:33Mrk 14:54
• A person or a message can be called this. Jesus says it of himself, says it of his followers, and Simeon says it of the child he is holding.Jhn 8:12Mat 5:14Luk 2:32
• It names a whole way of living, the open and honest realm set over against darkness, something you can be told to speak in and to walk in as its child.Mat 10:27Eph 5:8