Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is flying towards the Earth, which was last seen near our planet 50 thousand years ago, when mammoths were still walking the planet. The comet reached perihelion (the point of its orbit closest to the Sun) on January 12, and passed at 1.12 AU. (a unit of measurement approximately equal to 150 million km).
From February 11 to February 12, the comet will visit Mars and pass 1 degree east of the red planet. Furthermore, because the comet hasn’t been this close to the Sun in so many years, there’s a chance it will heat up and start to break apart, making it the brightest comet of a century, if not a millennium.
Meanwhile, Steve Fletcher recalled the 2013 comet because it was bright, pale green and strongly resembled the biblical text about the pale and greenish horse from the Apocalypse.
This memory prompted Steve to calculate the time distance between the comets, which, to his great surprise, was 3333 days – this is the time that separates the perihelions of the two comets ZTF (C/2022 E3 and C/2012 S1 (ISON).
Since such astronomical wonders had never been seen before, this led Steve to think that the number 3333 was a reference to Ezekiel 33:33, which in the King James Bible reads:
“And when this cometh to pass, (lo, it will come,) then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them.”
The word ‘Cometh’ does not exist in common English. There is the ‘Comet’, that is, comet and the word ‘Come’, with an incredibly wide range of meanings. Technically, you could say, of course, that ‘Cometh’ is somehow related to a certain type of arrival.
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However, people in the times of King James did not always know many words of their language, so it is unlikely that the monks used a temporary form incomprehensible to peasants. Therefore, by attempting to interpret an untranslated and incomprehensible word, we gain the following results:
”When it comes – and it will happen! Then they will know that a prophet was among them.”
”But when all these terrible things happen to them—and they will surely happen—then they will know that a prophet was among them.”
”But when all this happens – and it will happen! They will understand that there was a prophet among them.
”When it comes, and it will certainly come, then they will know that among them was a prophet.”
In the synodal translation it sounds like this:
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”But when it comes to pass—behold, it is already coming true—then they will know that there was a prophet among them.”
It would be interesting to see how it was all written down in the original language, moreover, in the presentation of a translator who lived 1500 years ago and accompanied Ezekiel in the Babylonian captivity, but, unfortunately, no one has the original book of Ezekiel.
Such a strange time interval between cometary perihelions suggests that comets are somehow unique, they measure accurately the time until the event indicated in verse 33:33. It is very possible that the compilers of the King James Bible had some ancient textual source in which they also came across an incomprehensible word for comet which they simply transcribed into Cometh. In that case, the reference of verse 33:33 to our time is undeniable.
But even if Cometh does not literally mean comet, there is still a good chance we stepped in the verse’s true hidden meaning. In this case, before Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) goes out or disappears from the horizon, people will understand that among them lives a ‘Great Prophet’, whose appearance is noted even by comets.