"MOONSTRUCK" IN THE BIBLE (PSALM 121:6; MATTHEW 4:24; 17:15)

 The Old Testament contains this interesting promise:

    “The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.” (Psalm 121:6)

Technically speaking, this is called an example of incomplete parallelism in which the second line echoes the form and general idea of the first line with, however, the absence of the verb and object, which are understood. Thus, we have:

    The sun shall not strike you by day, nor

    the moon          (strike you) by night.

There are several ways in which this verse can be interpreted:

Literary

You can see in this verse the pairing of opposites in “sun and moon” as well as in “day and night.” Often when this occurs in biblical writings, it is to be understood as a merism, a figure of speech in which the listing of opposite elements includes everything in between as well. Thus, the intended meaning might simply be that God will watch over you all the time. This is the interpretation found in a recent commentary by Nancy de Claisse-Walford.

Similarly, M'Caw and Motyer state, “The Keeper of Israel (v. 4) is 'your keeper,' shading from the sun and moon alike,' i.e. from all adversaries at all times, day and night.”

The Lord's protection “avails against the known and the unknown; perils of day and night; the most overpowering of forces and the most insidious.” (D. Kidner)

Ancient Superstition

But the above explanation is probably not complete in itself because it seemingly fails to draw an adequate parallel between the real danger of sunstroke in the first line (assuming that is what it is being referred to) and some sort of implied danger due to exposure to the moon in the second line. So here is where other commentators chime in.

Anderson says that “sunstroke was a real danger to travelers, and it was common in the ancient Near East (cf. 2 K. 4:19; Jon. 4:8; Jdt. 8:2f.). Equally frightening was the so-called 'moonstroke', and even our word 'lunatic' bears witness to this belief. Certain illnesses (such as epilepsy, fever) were frequently ascribed to the baneful influence of the moon. The parallelism between the sun and the moon is meant to be complementary (as in Jos. 10:12); Yahweh cares for his people both day and night.”

“God offers shade in the Middle Eastern sun; 'moon' is used as a formal poetic parallel to sun although according to some ancient views, exposure to the moon was also harmful (cf. Mt 17:15).” (Kselman)

“The moon has often in man's history been feared for its effect upon the mind and nervous system: cf. The word 'lunacy'. In Mt. 4:21; 17:15 'epileptic' is literally 'moonstruck'.” (L.C. Allen)

“Superstitious people may have believed that the moon had power to harm the person (cf. the English lunatic) but a believer in God needed not fear because the Lord watched over his own (Ps 121:5-6).” (Massouh and Verhoef)

Alter notes that the word 'shade' in v. 5 “is immediately literalized in the next line as a protection against sunstroke and moonstroke (the latter perhaps referring to madness supposedly caused by exposure to the moon). The point of the poem is that the Lord is quite literally a guardian or watchman who never sleeps.”

Medical

Derek Kidner states: “On the effects of 'the moon' on certain people, little is understood; but some kinds of mental disturbances vary with its phases. Not all popular belief on the subject is unfounded.” The following summary of an article put out by Cleveland Healthcare elaborates on that statement.

Preliminary medical research seems to indicate that the moon may have an impact on people with certain types of bipolar disorder. In a limited study (17 patients) by David Avery, he found that his patients cycled rapidly between states of depression and mania, with these cycles synchronized to the lunar cycle. Though the exact mechanism that causes this is unknown, it is believed that those quick changes in mood may be due to a disruption to their circadian rhythm and their sleep-wake cycle due to increased moonlight. Further work by Thomas Wehr seemed to confirm this study, but felt that the cause of the effect may more likely be due to changes in the gravitational pull of the moon. However, later studies have failed so far to duplicate these results.

Turning next to the New Testament, Matthew in 4:24 contains a list of those suffering from various diseases and physical conditions cured by Jesus, including demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics. The Greek word usually translated as “epileptics” (“lunaticks” in the King James Version) is seleniazomai, which literally translated means “moonstruck.”

The reason for the modern feeling that “moonstruck” is more related to epilepsy than to madness comes solely from the only other place in the NT where that same word appears, Matthew 17:15. The symptoms of the man in that case are more completely described in the parallel passage in Mark 9:14-29 and they closely match the description of epilepsy.

Not all commentaries, however, agree with that assessment. For example, France says that “we should note that in the ancient world, which was well acquainted with epilepsy, seleniazomai was not used at this time to mean epilepsy as such...J.M. Ross is more cautious, since 'if we translate it as epileptic we are probably narrowing down the meaning of the original and failing to make the classification clear' though his offered alternative, moonstruck, is even more open to misunderstanding. My translation 'subject to fits' attempts to avoid inappropriate medical precision.” NIV similarly translates it as “has seizures.”

But to confuse the issue even more, Dentan associates the Matthew passage with that in Psalms, concluding, “To be epileptic was attributed to the baleful influences of the moon, a demonic force (compare Ps. 121.6).”

But that “demonic force” cannot be the same sort of demon that Christ exorcized from the man in the Synoptic Gospels unless one wishes to feel that He was casting out the man in the moon. And we are certain that Mark ascribed the son's condition to demon possession.

Hill simply states that the “description of the boy's illness [in Mark's account] gives way to the medical diagnosis 'he is a lunatic' (seleniazetai); cf. 4:24. Epileptic fits were associated with the changes of the moon.” I have issue with two of Hill's statements. First, as mentioned above, “lunatic” is rejected as a valid English translation by most Greek scholars. Secondly, he fails to give any evidence showing that epilepsy and the phases of the moon were ever associated together.

Two more important points need to be made regarding this miraculous healing by Jesus. The first concerns the issue of etymology. Hendricksen wisely says, “The word which, in line with many translators and commentators, I have rendered epileptics, is in etymology [i.e. the subject of word origins] connected with the moon. Accordingly, some prefer the rendering 'moon-struck persons' or 'lunatics.' However, 17:15, where the same word is used and the affliction is graphically described, would seem to make it clear that the reference is to those who suffered from seizures; hence, epileptics. Though word derivation is important, it should not prevail over detailed description of an illness.” We could point to many words in current English which have quite a different meaning from that in the days where they were first coined. A pertinent example would be the use of “lunatic” or “loony,” both derived from the Latin word for moon, luna.

Therefore, the mere fact of a New Testament author such as Matthew using a word such as seleniazetai should not be used to demonstrate that he was mistakenly convinced that exposure to the moon caused or affected epilepsy.

Another caveat involves the supposed contradiction between scientific and spiritual explanations for medical phenomena. Colin Brown notes that several scholars “argue that a diagnosis of epilepsy in the story of Mark 9:14-27, Luke 9:37-43, and Matt. 17:14-18 does not automatically exclude demon possession as the cause. Epilepsy covers an ill-defined group of disorders characterized by fits or seizures. The case in question may have been an instance of idiopathic epilepsy for which modern medicine knows no cure and for which the cause may have been a spiritual malady.”

In the same vein, John Richards explains, “Had the lad in the Gospel suffered from symptomatic epilepsy our Lord could only have cured him by an act of healing rather than exorcism, just as he healed the man with an impediment in his speech (Mark 7:32-7) and a blind man (Mark 8:22-5) by the laying-on of hands, but a dumb and blind demoniac by exorcism (Matthew 12:2ff.).”

The difficulty in determining the difference between a medical and demonic cause is shown by the last two examples above. The same symptom (blindness) was apparently due to a medical cause in the first instance and caused by demonic influence in the second one. Personally, I feel the safest course today is to seek medical advice and assume, in light of passages such as Luke 10:17-18, that the days of widespread demon possession are no longer with us. Certainly I would not counsel anyone to eschew doctors in favor of relying entirely on faith healing.