CHISLEV

(Chisʹlev).

The postexilic name of the ninth Jewish lunar month, which fell within November and December. (Ne 1:1; Jer 36:9; Zec 7:1) It corresponded to the third month of the secular calendar.

This was a winter month, a month of cold and rain. So we read that King Jehoiakim 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 20th 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.”​—Ezr 10:9, 13.

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 25th 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.