CHISLEV
(Chisʹlev).
The postexilic name of the ninth Jewish lunar month, which falls within November and December. (Neh. 1:1; Jer. 36:9; Zech. 7:1) It corresponded with the third month of the secular calendar. The meaning of the name is uncertain.
This was a winter month, a month of cold and rain. So we read of King Jehoiakim that he was “sitting in the winter house, in the ninth month, with a brazier burning before him.” (Jer. 36:22) In postexilic Jerusalem, the people who gathered for the assembly ordered by priest Ezra beginning on the twentieth day of this month “kept sitting in the open place of the house of the true God, shivering because of the matter and on account of the showers of rain.” (Ezra 10:9, 13) Quite obviously there were no shepherds sleeping in the fields at night at this time of the year, nor for some time afterward.
The festival of dedication, held in the wintertime at Jerusalem, is mentioned at John 10:22. As shown in the Apocryphal book of 1 Maccabees (4:52-59), this eight-day festival was instituted by Judas Maccabaeus on the twenty-fifth day of Chislev in the year 165 B.C.E. to commemorate the rededication of the temple in Jerusalem. This festival is today known as Hanukkah.—See FESTIVAL OF DEDICATION.