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NightAid to Bible Understanding
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as the mother of both gods and men, and is described as riding in a chariot accompanied by the stars.
FIGURATIVE USE
The word “night” is at times used in a figurative or symbolic sense in the Bible. At John 9:4 Jesus spoke of the “night . . . coming when no man can work.” Jesus here referred to the time of his judgment, impalement and death, when he would be unable to engage in the works of his father. (See Ecclesiastes 9:10; Job 10:21, 22.) At Romans 13:11, 12 the “night” manifestly refers to a period of darkness caused by God’s adversary, which is due to be ended by Christ Jesus and his reign. (See Ephesians 6:12, 13; Colossians 1:13, 14.) At 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 God’s servants who have been enlightened by his truth are contrasted with worldly people who have not. Their way of life manifests that they are “sons of light and sons of day. [They] belong neither to night nor to darkness.” (See John 8:12; 12:36, 46; 1 Peter 2:9; 2 Corinthians 6:14.) A similar usage is found at Micah 3:6, where the prophet says to those rejecting true divine guidance: “Therefore you men will have night, so that there will be no vision; and darkness you will have, so as not to practice divination. And the sun will certainly set upon the prophets, and the day must get dark upon them.”—Compare John 3:19-21.
The night is also used to represent, generally, a time of adversity, since the night with its gloom and obscurity is the time when wild beasts roam, when armies launch surprise attacks, when thieves creep in, and other acts of evil are committed. (Ps. 91:5, 6; 104:20, 21; Isa. 21:4, 8, 9; Dan. 5:25-31; Obad. 5) It is in these different figurative senses that we must understand the texts at Revelation 21:2, 25 and 22:5, where we are assured that in the “New Jerusalem” “night will be no more.”
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NightjarAid to Bible Understanding
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NIGHTJAR
[Heb., li·lithʹ].
This Hebrew word, appearing in the description of Edom’s utter desolation and of the creatures inhabiting its ruins (Isa. 34:14), has been variously translated as “screech owl” (AV), “night-monster” (AS), and “night hag” (RS), while The Jerusalem Bible prefers simply to transliterate the name as “Lilith.” Many modern authorities endeavor to show that the Hebrew term is a “loan-word” from ancient Sumerian and Akkadian and that it derives from the name of a mythological female demon of the air (lilitu). Others, however, consider such a position unwarranted. Thus, in concluding its discussion of the matter, The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia (Vol. IV, p. 2145) states: “There still remains a by no means untenable supposition that none of the terms necessarily are mythological in this particular passage.” The New Bible Dictionary (1962, p. 740) comments: “There is, however, no real evidence for insisting on a mythological interpretation of the word, and it is perhaps significant that most of the other creatures listed in Is. xxxiv are real animals or birds.”
In an article in the Palestine Exploration Quarterly (1959, Vol. XCI, p. 55), Professor G. R. Driver likewise states that “there is no reason to expect such a loan-word in any passage of the Old Testament where no ancient Vs.[Version] attests it.” He considers the Hebrew word (li·lithʹ) to derive from a root word denoting “every kind of twisting motion or twisted object,” even as the Hebrew word layʹlah (or laʹyil) meaning “night” suggests a “wrapping itself round or enfolding the earth.” Such derivation of li·lithʹ, he suggests, may likely point to the “nightjar” as both a nocturnal feeding bird and one noted for its rapid twisting and turning flight as it pursues moths, beetles and other night-flying insects. Tristram, the naturalist, described the nightjar as “becoming very active towards dusk, when they hawk about at great speed and with intricate turnings after their food.”
As to the likelihood of such a bird being found in the arid region of Edom, certain varieties of this bird are known to inhabit waste places. An Egyptian nightjar (Caprimulgus æqyptius) lives almost exclusively in the desert, occupying acacia groves and tamarisk bushes and seeking its food in twilight. Another (Caprimulgus tamaricis) is found at the northern and southern ends of the Dead Sea, hence in regions like that of Edom.
The nightjar is considered to be related to the owl and to include the whippoorwill among its members. Its English name derives from the fact that, like the owl, it is a nocturnal feeder and also from the peculiar “jarring” sound it makes, described as like the churring sound of “a pallet falling on the cogs of a rapidly-working wheel.” About eleven inches (28 centimeters) in length with a wingspan of twenty inches (51 centimeters), its plumage resembles the owl’s, being soft and delicately mottled with gray and brown. The soft wing feathers also allow for noiseless flight like that of the owls. Unlike the owl, however, it is solely an insect eater, equipped with a small beak but an unusually large mouth in which it engulfs its food, large bristles projecting from the corners of the mouth helping to funnel in the insects. Its large mouth is evidently the reason for its also being called the “goatsucker,” an ancient legend holding that the bird sucked the milk of goats.
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NileAid to Bible Understanding
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NILE
The Greek name given to the river, the lower part of whose valley formed the land of ancient Egypt, making that land essentially a river oasis. In the Hebrew Scriptures the river is regularly referred to by the term yeʼohrʹ (sometimes yeʼorʹ). According to the Hebrew lexicons by Brown, Driver and Briggs and by Koehler and Baumgartner, the word itself means a stream or canal (as at Isaiah 33:21) or a water-filled shaft or gallery (made in mining, as at Job 28:10). In one case yeʼohrʹ is used to refer to the Tigris River (Biblical Hiddekel) of Mesopotamia. (Dan. 12:5-7; compare 10:4.) All other occurrences, the context indicates, apply to the Nile or, when in the plural form, to the Nile canals or arms. (Ps. 78:44; Isa. 7:18) The common Egyptian name (itrw) for the river, at least from the so-called “Middle Kingdom” on, corresponds closely to the Hebrew.
THE COURSE OF THE NILE
The Nile is generally ranked as the longest river on earth. Its length of 4,160 miles (c. 6,693 kilometers) is measured from its sources, which take their rise in the lake regions of modern Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania. These sources flow into Lake Victoria and from here a river passes over to Lake Albert; farther north the stream is known as the White Nile. At Khartoum, the White Nile is joined by the Blue Nile, which cascades down from the mountains of northern Ethiopia. Below Khartoum the river forms the Nile proper, and as such receives the waters of only one more tributary, the Atbara River, its confluence with the Nile occurring about two hundred miles (321.8 kilometers) NE of Khartoum. The Nile then winds its way through the desolate tableland of northern Sudan, passing over six separate beds of hard granite rock that create six cataracts between Khartoum and Aswan (Biblical Syene), the point where Nubia ended and ancient Egypt began. Finally, having lost much of its volume due to evaporation by the blazing sun and the demands of Egyptian irrigation, some 1,700 miles (c. 2,735 kilometers) N of Khartoum the Nile’s waters empty into the Mediterranean Sea.
The Nile valley is quite narrow along most of the river’s course. Through much of Nubia the river flows through a gorge, bordered on each side by the desert. North of Aswan, in what was Upper Egypt, the valley broadens out but the rocky cliffs on either side are never more than about thirteen miles (c. 21 kilometers) apart. However, when the river reaches the region just N of modern Cairo it divides into two main branches, now called the Rosetta and the Damietta, after the names of the port cities situated at the mouths of these branches on the Mediterranean
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