tsaba. Lloyd in his analysis says of this verse and word: "The allusion is to the marshal

array of an army. All the parts of the visible creation, like a disciplined army, had their

proper place."

The only objection to this comment is that it does not go far enough. The kosmos was

not "like" a disciplined army, IT WAS AN ARMY and there was at the time of the six

days' creation a state of war in the universe, the chosen battlefield being the earth with its

immediate heavens. It is not enough to merely make such a statement. Readers of The

Berean Expositor expect demonstration and proof.

Tsaba the Hebrew word translated "host" and kosmos occurs in two forms, the verb

thirteen times, the noun 486 times. The verb is translated "fight", "war", "muster",

"assemble", "wait upon" and "perform". Even where it is employed in describing the

service of the tabernacle, the margin (Numb. 4: 23 and 8: 24, 25) tells us that the

service equally with that of the soldier in the field was "to war the warfare". Two

references to "assemble" are used only of women, and could be unrelated to the

conception of war, but even then we do not really know why these women "assembled in

troops" at the tabernacle. The noun is translated mostly by the word "host", of itself a

military term, and then "war", "warfare", "army", "battle" and "soldier" leaving only

thirteen references out of the 486 to be translated "appointed time", "company", "waiting

upon" and "service", and even among these the margin in the Revised Version has

rendered some by the word "warfare". Moses uses the word tsaba seventy-nine times, of

which seventy-seven speak of war, battle, army and host, and two of the host of heaven.

In Dan. 10: 1 where we read "the time appointed" the Revised Version reads "warfare".

The occurrences of tsaba in Daniel apart from this reference are 8: 10, 11, 12, 13,

where the antichristian king of the latter days wages war against the host of heaven,

ultimately to be broken without hand (8: 25).

"The Lord is a Man of War" says Moses at the overthrow of Pharaoh at the Red Sea.

The Hebrew word haras which is translated kataballo in some other places, is used here

in Exod. 15: 7; the "depths" that closed over Pharaoh and his host (Exod. 15: 5) is the

Hebrew tehom identically the same that is used in Gen. 1: 2. The same word that is used

of "the Spirit" that moved on the face of the waters for the reconstruction of the world is

translated "blast" in Exod. 15: 8. Like the flood in the days of Noah, as the epistles of

Peter testify, the overthrow at the Red Sea is a smaller version of that primal catastrophe,

and enables us to see that these were all acts of "war". Another lesser picture of the same

conflict is that of the destruction of a Canaanitish king Sisera at the hand of a woman.

Deborah the prophetess when commemorating the victory says:

Here the heavenly host, spoken of as "stars", engage in conflict, and Megiddo but

looks forward to Armageddon, the mountain of Megiddo, where will be fought the "battle

of the great day of God" (Rev. 16: 16) with all its demonic accompaniments. Revelation

plainly tells us that there will be "war in heaven" and the fallen followers, "the army" of