NIGHT (nit), (Heb. lah'yil ; ril?t lah'yel ,771 t; Gr. p4, nooks).
Besides representing these properly equivalent Hebrew and Greek words, 'night' stands in A. V. once for 'darkness' (Job xxvi :1o: R. V. 'dark ness') ; thrice for ' twilight' (Is. v:11, R. V. 'night '; Is. xxi:4; lix:io, R. V. ' twilight '); and four times for ' evening' (Gen. xlix:27, R. V. 'even '; Lev. vi:2o, 12. V. evening % Job vii:4, R.
V. 'night % Ps. xxx:5, R. V. 'night % 12. V. marg. ' even ); 'night season' (Job xxx:17), and ' night seasons' (Ps. xvi:17); ' to pass the night' occurs Dan. vi:18, and in the New Testament we have 'midnight' (Mark xiii:35 ; Luke xi:5 ; Acts xvi: 25; xx:7); 'to continue all night ' (Luke vi:12); ' a night and a day' (2 Cor. xi:25). R. V. omits ' night' on textual grounds from four passages where the word appears in A. V., viz., Matt. xxvii :64 ; Mark xiv :27; John vii :so; 2 Pet. iii :to. (James Patrick, Hastings' Bib. Dict.) (See DAY ; TrmE.) FiguratiVe. The term of human life is usually called a day in Scripture; but in one passage it is called night, to be followed soon by day, 'the day is at hand' (Rom. viii:r2). Being a time of dark
ness. the image and shadow of death, in which the beasts of prey go forth to devour, it was made a symbol of a season of adversity and trouble, in which men prey upon each other, and the strong tyrannize over the weak (Is. xxi :12; Zech. xiv : 6, 7). Hence continued day, or the absence of night, implies a constant state of quiet and happi ness, undisturbed by the vicissitudes of peace and war. Night is also put, as in our own language, for a time of ignorance and helplessness (Mic. iii :6). In John ix:4 night represents death, a necessary result of the correlative usage which makes life a day. In the beautiful passage, "There shall be no night there" (Rev. xxi :25; xxii :5), the meaning is that heaven is a place where no sorrow or sin or death finds entrance.