Eclipse

Solar eclipses are alluded to in several prophetic passages of the Old Testament, though the word "eclipse" itself does not appear in Scripture. Amos 8:9 records the divine warning: "I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day" — an image of sudden judgment using the natural phenomenon of eclipse or darkness as a sign. Similar imagery appears in Micah 3:6, Zechariah 14:6, and Joel 2:10, where the darkening of sun and moon accompanies eschatological judgment or the Day of the LORD.

The darkening of the sun during the crucifixion of Jesus (Matthew 27:45; Luke 23:44–45), traditionally described as "darkness over all the land" from noon until 3 p.m., has been interpreted both as miraculous and as a solar eclipse, though the Passover timing (a full moon) makes an ordinary lunar eclipse impossible and a solar eclipse equally improbable astronomically. Most scholars treat the darkness as a supernatural sign accompanying the death of Christ, consistent with the OT prophetic pattern in which cosmic darkness signals divine action in history.