It reads like an afterthought: a casual claim within the grandiose story of creation. Following a narrative on solar and lunar systems comes this five-word sentence: “He also made the stars” (Gen.1: 16 NIV).
Astrophysicists use the Hubble Space Telescope to map His sky. After spending hundreds of hours gathering light, the Telescope allows them to see further into a specific region. They isolate and measure a ‘slice’ of it, then compute its approximate size. According to their estimate, our universe consists of 170 billion galaxies. A recent supercomputer simulation in Germany estimated 500 billion galaxies.
Galaxies are collections of stars. The largest are elliptical. The most common is M87. This galaxy, alone, contains 2.7 trillion stars.
Within the billions of galaxies is our own, the Milky Way. Far more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists use VLBA, a radio telescope, to remap our Milky Way. This barred, spiral galaxy contains 100 – 400 billion stars.
Isaiah wrote, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Ask me about the things to come…. It is I who made the earth and created mankind on it. My own hands stretched out the heavens; I marshaled their starry hosts.'” (Is. 45:11,12 ESV, NIV)
Within our Milky Way galaxy is the solar system. It is comprised of the Sun, as well as the planets, moons, and other bodies that orbit it. So far, astronomers have found more than 500 solar systems in our galaxy and estimate there may be as many as 100 billion. In our Milky Way, alone, there may be 7 billion stars similar to the Sun.
Our planet Earth is some 93 million miles from the Sun, our nearest star. Despite the scant reference in Genesis, God gave special applications to His stars. Without our Sun, we could not survive. Radiation transfers its heat to our planet seamlessly, its light as well. All of the stars’ positions change except the Pole star, Polaris, which is fixed with the Earth’s axis rotation. This North Star continues to guide navigators with a virtual compass in the sky.
Like everything else in God’s world, there is intent and purpose.
British astronomers used a NASA telescope to capture sounds emitted by stars light years away from Earth. Writing in the journal, Science, the team says the “music” gives a more accurate picture of their size and structure.
The pulsation of the stars makes them ‘sing’. Amazingly, no star makes the same sound. Each is unique, with varied pitch, timbre and rumbling. Professor Ian Roxburgh of Queen Mary College said, “It’s like listening to the sound of a musical instrument and then trying to reconstruct the shape of it.”
There are more than 100 billion galaxies in our observable universe. A typical galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars.
It is God’s mass choir.
God asked of Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? …Who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38: 4-7 NASB)
Here it is. A celestial chorus whose proportions we cannot begin to grasp. “How good it is to sing praises to our God,” the Psalmist wrote. “How pleasant and fitting to praise Him! …He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.” (Psalm 47: 1-4 NIV)
Charles Spurgeon asks, “Did you not conceive that yon stars, that those eyes of God, looking down on you, were also mouths of song – that every star was singing God’s glory, singing, as it shone, its mighty Maker, and his lawful, well-deserved praise?”
After all of man’s research and development, we have identified only a pitiful sliver of the galaxy we live in. The writer’s offhand reference to God’s work on day four becomes a symbol of His magnificence. We gain an otherworldly perspective on the call of the Psalmist to, “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.” We join our voices to the song of the stars, “For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise… For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens.” (Ps.96: 1-4 NIV)
He also made the stars.