Sacred Text · The Avesta

Who set the sun and stars their way

Ushtavaiti Gatha · Yasna 44.3 · L. H. Mills

“This I ask Thee, O Ahura! tell me aright: Who by generation was the first father of the Righteous Order (within the world)? Who gave the (recurring) sun and stars their (undeviating) way? Who established that whereby the moon waxes, and whereby she wanes, save Thee? These things, O Great Creator! would I know, and others likewise still.”
Yasna 44.3 (Ushtavaiti Gatha) · L. H. Mills, SBE XXXI

Translation: Lawrence H. Mills (1887), The Zend-Avesta, Part III (The Yasna, Visparad, Afrinagan, Gahs and Miscellaneous Fragments), Sacred Books of the East vol. XXXI, public domain, via the Internet Archive (item zendavesta03darm). Reproduced in context; Mills’ round and square brackets are his own clarifying insertions, and embedded footnote marks in the scanned text were removed. Chapter and verse follow the standard Yasna numbering.

Christian comparison

How this connects to Jesus

Who gave the sun and the stars their course, and set the waxing and the waning of the moon? Zarathushtra’s questions rise to the one wise Lord, Ahura Mazda, the maker of all. Scripture asks in almost the same voice, out of the whirlwind and from the Psalms: who laid the foundations of the earth, who set the stars in place (Job 38:4-7; Psalm 19:1). Christians confess this one Creator, and the Gospel says all things were made through his Word, who took on a face in Jesus (John 1:3).

Explore: One Lord, the CreatorWhy Jesus?Read the Gospel
← Previous passageNext passage →

← All Avesta passages that point to Christ

Enter Living Breadprayer, Scripture, a family near you