22 Bible Verses About the Moon

Genesis 1:16

“God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.”

Reflection: The creation account does not name the sun or the moon here; it calls them “the greater light” and “the lesser light.” Verse 14 gives the lights their purpose: to “serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years.” Verse 18 adds that they separate light from darkness, and God sees that it is good.

Psalm 104:19

“He made the moon to mark the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down.”

Reflection: Psalm 104 praises God for ordering the world, and after the moon and the sun in verse 19 it follows a night from dark to dawn: “You bring darkness, it becomes night, and all the beasts of the forest prowl,” until sunrise sends the lions back to their dens and people out “to their labor until evening” (verses 20-23).

Psalm 136:7-9

“who made the great lights—His love endures forever. The sun to govern the day, His love endures forever; the moon and stars to govern the night, His love endures forever.”

Reflection: Every verse of Psalm 136 ends with the response “His love endures forever.” Verses 7-9 count the sun, moon and stars among God’s acts, and verse 10 moves straight from creation to the night God “struck down the firstborn of Egypt,” giving thanks for both in the same refrain.

Psalm 8:3-4

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?”

Reflection: The psalm opens with “Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” Looking at the moon and stars, “the work of your fingers,” the psalmist asks why God should care for human beings at all. Verses 5-6 answer that God made them “a little lower than the angels” and made them “rulers over the works of your hands.”

Psalm 148:3

“Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars.”

Reflection: Psalm 148 calls on everything in the heavens to praise the Lord, then turns in verse 7 to the earth, from “great sea creatures” downward. Verse 5 gives the reason they are to praise: “Let them praise the name of the Lord, for at his command they were created,” and verse 6 adds that “he established them for ever and ever.”

Joshua 10:12-13

“On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel: ‘Sun, stand still over Gibeon, and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.’ So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies.”

Reflection: Five Amorite kings had joined forces and attacked Gibeon (verse 5), and Joshua spoke these words during the battle to defend it. The sun stood still over Gibeon and the moon over the Valley of Aijalon “till the nation avenged itself on its enemies.” The writer cites the Book of Jashar for the account, and verse 14 says there was never a day like it, “a day when the Lord listened to a human being.”

Psalm 121:6

“the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.”

Reflection: The psalm opens with a question, “where does my help come from?”, and answers it: “from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” Verse 5 calls the Lord “your shade at your right hand,” and verse 6 names what the shade guards against by day and by night. Verse 7 widens the promise: “The Lord will keep you from all harm.”

Psalm 81:3

“Sound the ram’s horn at the New Moon, and when the moon is full, on the day of our festival;”

Reflection: Psalm 81 opens with a call to sing and play the timbrel, harp and lyre (verses 1-2), then to sound the ram’s horn at the New Moon and the full moon, “on the day of our festival.” Verse 4 grounds the practice in law: “this is a decree for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob.” Numbers 10:10 also orders trumpets sounded over the offerings at the “New Moon feasts.”

Colossians 2:16-17

“Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.”

Reflection: Paul lists a New Moon celebration with food, drink, religious festivals and the Sabbath as matters on which the Christians at Colossae should not let anyone judge them. Verse 17 gives his reason: these are “a shadow of the things that were to come,” while “the reality, however, is found in Christ.”

Jeremiah 31:35-36

“This is what the LORD says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—the LORD Almighty is his name: ‘Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,’ declares the LORD, ‘will Israel ever cease being a nation before me.’”

Reflection: These verses follow the promise of “a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah” (Jeremiah 31:31). The Lord points to the sun, moon and stars he has fixed in their courses and says Israel will cease being a nation before him only if those decrees vanish. Verse 37 repeats the promise with a second impossible condition: measuring the heavens and searching out the foundations of the earth.

Psalm 72:5, 7

“May he endure as long as the sun, as long as the moon, through all generations… In his days may the righteous flourish and prosperity abound till the moon is no more.”

Reflection: Psalm 72 is a prayer for the king: “Endow the king with your justice, O God” (verse 1). Verses 5 and 7 ask that he endure as long as the moon and that the righteous flourish under him “till the moon is no more.” Psalm 89:37 uses the same measure for David’s line, which will be “established forever like the moon, the faithful witness in the sky.”

Deuteronomy 4:19

“And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.”

Reflection: Moses reminds Israel that they “saw no form of any kind” when the Lord spoke to them at Horeb (verse 15), and he forbids them to make an image of any creature on earth, in the air or in the water. Verse 19 carries the ban upward to the sun, moon and stars, calling them things the Lord “has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.”

Job 31:26-27

“if I have regarded the sun in its radiance or the moon moving in splendor, so that my heart was secretly enticed and my hand offered them a kiss of homage,”

Reflection: In chapter 31 Job lists wrongs he says he has not done, and for some of them he calls down a penalty on himself, such as “may my crops be uprooted” (verse 8). Here the wrong would be gazing at the sun or the moon until his heart was “secretly enticed” and his hand offered “a kiss of homage.” Verse 28 says these “would be sins to be judged, for I would have been unfaithful to God on high.”

Song of Solomon 6:10

“Who is this that appears like the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, majestic as the stars in procession?”

Reflection: Verse 9 says the young women saw the beloved “and called her blessed,” and that “the queens and concubines praised her.” Verse 10 then sets her beside the dawn, the moon, the sun and “the stars in procession,” asking who she is.

Ecclesiastes 12:2

“before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain;”

Reflection: The Teacher tells the young to “remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come” (verse 1). The darkening of sun, moon and stars opens a run of images, from trembling keepers of the house to grinders who cease, that reaches verse 5: “people go to their eternal home and mourners go about the streets.”

Revelation 12:1

“A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.”

Reflection: Revelation 12 calls the woman “a great sign” in heaven. The verses after it add that she is about to give birth, that an enormous red dragon stands ready to devour her child, and that the son she bears “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter” before he is “snatched up to God and to his throne” (verses 2-5).

Isaiah 13:10

“The stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light. The rising sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light.”

Reflection: Isaiah 13 opens “A prophecy against Babylon that Isaiah son of Amoz saw.” Verse 9 announces that “the day of the Lord is coming,” and the darkened stars, sun and moon come just before the Lord says, “I will punish the world for its evil” (verse 11).

Joel 2:31

“The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.”

Reflection: Joel places the change in the sun and moon “before” the day of the Lord, after the promise “I will pour out my Spirit on all people” (verse 28), and verse 32 adds that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” On the day of Pentecost Peter quoted verses 28-32 to explain the disciples’ speaking, introducing them with “In the last days” (Acts 2:16-21). Acts 2:20 reads “great and glorious day” where Joel has “great and dreadful day.”

Matthew 24:29

“Immediately after the distress of those days ‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’”

Reflection: On the Mount of Olives the disciples ask Jesus when the temple will be thrown down and what will be “the sign of your coming and of the end of the age” (verse 3). The darkened sun and moon come “immediately after the distress of those days,” and in verse 30 the Son of Man appears “coming on the clouds of heaven.” The wording echoes Isaiah 13:10, and verse 34 adds, “this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”

Revelation 6:12

“I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red,”

Reflection: The opening of the sixth seal brings an earthquake, a black sun, a blood-red moon, and stars falling “as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind” (verse 13). The moon turned to blood repeats the picture in Joel 2:31. In verses 15-17 everyone from kings to slaves hides in caves, saying that “the great day of their wrath has come.”

Isaiah 30:26

“The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the LORD binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted.”

Reflection: The brighter moon belongs to a promise to the people of Zion, who “will weep no more” (verse 19); verse 23 promises rain for the seed and food that is “rich and plentiful.” Verse 26 ties the sevenfold light to the day “when the Lord binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted.”

Revelation 21:23

“The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.”

Reflection: The city in Revelation 21 has no temple, “because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (verse 22), and no need of sun or moon. Isaiah 60:19-20 had promised Zion the same: “the Lord will be your everlasting light,” and “your moon will wane no more.” Revelation 22:5 repeats that “there will be no more night.”