Dawn, t)^9, ne'sheph, the 5rea^«n|^ or breeze of the cooler part of the day ; prop, the evening ' * twilight" (as usually rendered), hence the morning twilight or "dawning" (Job vii, 4; Psa. cxix, 147; "twilight," 1 Sam. XXX, 17; 2 Kings, vii, 5, 7); poet D^B^B?,
DAY
702
DAY
t^pkappa'^im, eytrUds (as elsewhere rendered) of the mom, t e. day-break (Job iii, 9); also MSB, to tern, spoken of the change of darkness into light (Judg. xix, 26); and h^7, to a$cend^ of the lifting of night's shades (Josh, vi, 16). In Greek Im^tMrKut^ to grmo light (Matt, xxviii, 1 ; hence also of the approaching Sabbath, Lake xxiii, ^) ; and SiavydZut, to become lustrouSf as throngh a crevice (2 Pet. i, 19). See Day.
Day (properly fii*^, y6mj 17/iepa). The yariable length of the natural day (*' ab exorta ad occasum so- ils," Censor, de Die Nat. 23) at different seasons led in the very earliest times to the adoption of the civil day (or one revolution of the sun) as a standard of time. The commencement of the civil day varied in different nations : the Babylonians (like the people of Nurem- berg) reckoned it from sunrise to sunrise (Isidor. Orig. T, 80) ; the Umbrians from noon to noon ; the Romans f^om midnight to midnight (Plin. ii, 79) ; the Atheni- ans and others from sunset to sunset (MiAcrob. Saturn. i, 8 ; Gell. iii, 2). See Chronology.
The Hebrews adopted the latter reckoning (Lev. xxlii, 82, *' from even to even shall ye celebrate your Sabbath"), which appears even in Gen. i, 6, ** the even- ing and the morning were [on] the first day" (a passage which the Jews are said to have quoted to Alexander the Great, Gemara, Tamid^ 66, 1; Reland, Ant. ffebr. iv, 15). Some (as in Godwyn*s Afoaes and Aaron) ar- gue foolishly, from Matt xxviil, 1, that they began their civil day in the morning; but the expression liriffxaffKovarf shows tliat the natural day is there in- tended. Hence the expression "evening-morning" = day (Dan. viii, 14, Sept. wxPnfupov), the Hindoo ahoratra (Yon Bohlen on Gen. i, 4), the Greek wyOri- fiipov (2 Cor. xi, 25). There was a similar custom among the Athenians, Arabians, and ancient Teu- tons (Tac. Germ, xi, **nec dierum numerum at apud nos, sed noctium computant . . . nox dncere diem videtur") and Celtic nations (Ctesar, BeU. Gall, vi, 18, **ut noctem dies subsequatur"). This mode of reckoning was widely spread ; it b found in the Ro- man law (Gains, i, 112), in the Niebelnngenlied, in the Salic law (inter decern noctet)^ in our own terms " fort- nightj" "se*n-n»yA<" (see Orelli, etc. in loc. Tac.), and even among the Siamese ("they reckon by nights," Bowring, i, 187) and New Zealanders (Taylor's Te- Ika-Mam, p. 20). No doubt this arose from the gen- eral notion "that the first day in Eden was 86 hours long" (LightfiDot's Wwrkt, ii, 884, ed. Pitman ; Hesiod, Theogon. 128 ; Aristoph. Av. 693 ; Wilkinson, Anc. Eg. iv, 274). Kalisch plausibly refers it to the use of lu- nar years (Gen. p. 67). Sometimes, however, they reckoned frt)m sunrise (i^fiipovvicrtoVf comp. Psa. i, 2 ; Lev. vii, 15). The less obvious starting-points of noon and midnight, the former adopted by the Etruscans, etc., the latter by the Roman priests, Egyptians (see, however, Lepsius, Ckronol. p. 180), and others, were chosen either as the culminating points, as it were, of light and darkness, or for astronomical purposes (Ideler, Bb. d. Chron. i, 29, 80, 100 sq. ; comp. Tacit. Germ. 11 ; Macrob. Sat, xxxUi, etc.). To the Hebrews, the moon had distinctly been pointed out as the regulator of time (Psa. civ, 19). Nevertheless, it has always been a moot point whether the Hebrews, at all times and in all respects, began their calendar or civil day with the night. (See Felseisen, De ctviU Judaorum die, Lpz. 1702 ; Federreuther, De ditfnu jEgtfptiac%$, Altd. 1757.) It has been argued that, if this had been the case, the lawgiver could not have designated those very evenings which he wished to belong ritually to the following (15th, 10th) day, as the evenings of the previous (14th, 9th) day (Lev, 1. c). Further, that in common biblical phraseology, the day is frequently mentioned before the night (Psa. i, 2, etc.) ; and that of the ffiist days mentioned in Zech. viii, 19, only one begins with the previous evening. Finally — ^not to
mention other objections — it has been aQegtd^ even in ritual points the Bible occasioiuSjr ms the night as following, not aa preocdingtheirili vii, 15). There seems, in fact, no other wiy rf w dling these apparent inoooalstendet tins to m (comp. Mishnah, Chdin, v, 6) dial no abeoltite n^k been laid down with respect to the oomnMoeoai
the civil day, and that usage varied someik « the customs of the people where the Hebrevi vetl the time sojourning. The prevalent method tf pntation, however, is evinced by the hd that Iks ish civil day still begins, not with the the evening— thus the Sabbath commencei vik sunset of Friday, and ends with the sunset Uia day. That this was the case in Jndjea in cs i« iour's day is evident from the evangelists' iosm the Passion. In New England the same mode dm oning the Sabbath was formerly common. Seel»