The Kneeler

From the beginning, the constellation Hercules was figured as a man kneeling on one knee with his right foot planted on the head of the great serpent Draco. The Romans called him Hercules after the Greek’s Herakles, but long before that he was known only as the Kneeler, and it was understood that he knelt as a burden-bearer, a laborer.

In the stories, Hercules always works against evil:
• the lion of Nemea which no weapons could wound
• the nine-headed Hydra which grew two more heads wherever one was cut off
• the filth of thousands of animals many years in the Augean stables
• Cerberus, the three-headed dog of Hades.

Do any of these evils sound familiar?
Do you know of one “walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour”?
Have you struggled against behaviors that when one seems conquered more spring up?
Have you discovered a buildup of junk in the closet of your past?
Do you struggle with the fear of death?

The Kneeler pictures the One who went about doing good. Jesus said, “I must work the works of Him who sent Me,” John 9:4.

Hercules pictures the promised One who would crush the serpent’s head—through it brought himself to his knees, Genesis 3:15. Jesus knelt in agonized prayer before His greatest work. And He completed that work,

“Having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it,” Colossians 2:14-15.

Jesus defeated death:

“Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him,” Romans 6:9.

And the fear of death:

“So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

“O Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?” 1 Corinthians 15:54-55.

Although the Greeks named Herakles, claimed him as their greatest hero-god, and told many stories of his feats, they admitted ignorance about the original figure. The poet Aratus wrote of it:

“An image none knows certainly to name,
Nor what he labors for.”

But for us, can there be any doubt that the ancient sky-figure was a prophetic representation of the promised Redeemer?