| synonyms: | exaggeration, overstatement, magnification, embroidery; |
Example:
Psalm 147:4New International Version (NIV)
He determines the number of the stars
and calls them each by name.
(The author no doubt was looking at his night sky at the time without any knowledge of what this Universe was. On a clear night you can see about 6000 stars.
With our current understanding this would be
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Septillion stars if we use our hundred billion star Milky Way Galaxy as the standard norm.
This does not include the concept of parallel universes which may mean ours is just on grape on one cluster in one row of one vineyard of many
Current estimates put the number of galaxies in our universe at 10 trillion.
A rather small part of the Universe as recorded by Hubbel
Hubbel Deep Field view of approximately 10,000 Galaxies of 100 billion stars each in the field behind a grain of sand held on your finger tip at arms length.
This does not include the billions of stars in the early universe that have come and gone, spewing their iron cores into the universe land out of whose debris we got our solar system and new sun.
A piece of the early Solar System arrives on earth
My own piece of heaven . Nine lbs of Campo Del Cielo or "Field of Heaven" iron/nickel star and asteroid core which I cut and polished. At 4.5 billion years old, it's really cool to hold something that spent most of its time orbiting between Mars and Jupiter until bumped into the inner solar system 6000+ years ago and found 500 years ago.
The scriptures us hyperbole to make its points not to reflect actual facts. A 200 million man army of Revelation is hyperbole. Seeing "all the nations of the earth" from atop the highest wall of the Temple is hyperbole (or reflects a small flat earth concept).
“If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out…” Matt. 5:29 (I met a Christian who actually tried to pluck out his right eye because he had a lust problem. This is an example the kind of problem a Bible translation can cause if one is not informed of the various figures of speech found in the Bible.)
“If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother…” Luke 14:26 (The true meaning is one must put God first.)
“Behold, the world is gone after him.” John 12:19 (The whole world at that time did NOT follow after him, but very large crowds in Israel did.)
“And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shall be brought to hell (Hades/sheol).” Matt. 11:23 (The city of Capernaum was never in heaven or hell/hades/sheol. But the city was exalted and made prominent because the very Son of God chose that city to do mighty miracles in, but then it went into the dust. The trade routes which made it prosperous changed bypassing the city. It became depopulated, brought to ruins and covered with dirt. It wasn’t until this century that archaeologists unearthed it.)
“The rock poured me out rivers of oil.” Job 29:6 (He had an abundance of good things.)
“The cities are great, and walled up to heaven.” Deut. 1:28 (They were very high.)
“Everyone could sling stones at a hair and not miss.” Judges 20:16 (They were very accurate.)
http://tentmaker.org/Biblematters/hyperbole.htm
Don't take everything you read in scripture literally.
Don't take much of anything the Church of God Apostles and Prophets too literally true
(Or at all true)
You could get hurt.