The Light of the Seven Days


by Immanuel Velikovsky
The Immanuel Velikovsky Archive



Isaiah in describing
the days to come, when great changes in nature will take place,
says that the earth will give its increase in abundance, and “the
light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light
of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of the seven days. .
. .” (1)

One could think
that “the light of the seven days” refers to the seven
days of creation – however, the actual explanation appears
to me to be different: the expression “the light of the seven
days” refers, in my view, to the seven days preceding the Flood
that are referred to in the verse: “For yet seven days, and
I will cause it to rain upon the earth. . . . And it came to pass
after seven days, that the waters of the Flood were upon the earth.”
(Genesis 7: 4, 10) It is not explained in the text – after
seven days of what? But the rabbinical tradition relates that for
seven days before the Deluge “the people heard a great commotion
in the heaven,” that signified “the end of the age.”

The Talmudic
tradition that often reaches much farther into the past than better
known sources, like the books of the Scriptures, reveals in this
instance a memory not suspected at the reading of the seventh chapter
of Genesis. But in view of what we have brought out until now, and
what we intend to illuminate on the following pages, the blinding
light preceding the Deluge by seven days is an interesting and important
detail. The world was in a dazzling light, sevenfold stronger than
the light of the sun; the light was so strong and so brilliant day
and night alike, that the sun was entirely overpowered by it; and
in the days of Isaiah, thousands of years later, the memory of the
light of the seven days was vivid in tradition, so that the prophet
could refer to it in desiring to describe the solar light of the
messianic age.(2)

Numerous Sanscrit
texts assert that seven or even twelve suns shone just before the
Deluge. “Being ignited, all of a sudden, the entire terrestrial
sphere blazed forth.” Twelve suns shone with “dazzling
radiance” and consumed the world. (The Skanda Purana in
Shastri, The Flood Legend in Sanscrit Literature, p.
86). Cf. similar accounts in the Matsya Purana, ch. ii, the
Padma Purana, ch. xxxvi, the Vishnu Purana, ch. iii,
the Kalika Purana, ch. xxv, and in the Mahabharata,
chapter “Matsyopakhyana.”

The light
of the seven days was not of solar origin. Of what origin was it?
Was it caused by brightly illuminated clouds of ionized hydrogen,
or protons, hurled throughout the solar system and poured on earth?
In the latter case they could have arrived from the present distance
of Saturn in about a week, considering that the proton particles
– ionized hydrogen – arrive from the sun in the space
of twenty-five hours.(3)
This is the time which elapses from a flare-up on the sun (protuberance)
to the display of the polar lights – the aurora borealis.

The light
of the seven days served the population of the world as a warning
of some extraordinary events.(4)

References

  1. Isaiah
    30:26.

  2. [A
    memory of the light of the seven days may be preserved in the
    Babylonian account of “flaming torches, lighting up the
    land with their brightness” just prior to the arrival of
    the waters of the Deluge. (    The
    Epic of Gilgamesh    ,     transl. by A. Heidel, tablet XI).]

  3. The
    distance of Saturn from the Sun is about 9.5 astronomical units.
    See below, section “Saturn’s Golden Age.”

  4. [A
    warning of seven daysÂ’ duration is also a feature of several
    of the Sanscrit accounts. See S. Shastri, The Flood Legend
    in Sanscrit Literature     (Delhi, 1950), p. 30.]

Reprinted
from the The
Immanuel Velikovsky Archive.

December
24, 2011

Copyright
© 2011 The
Immanuel Velikovsky Archive