MECTOIMKTIOU, Midnight, from the third hour to midnight.
'AXetcropoq50.wias, cock-crowing, from midnight to the third hour after midnight. Ended with the second cock-crowing.
lIpcg, early, from the ninth hour of the night to the twelfth, including the morning dawn or twilight. Also called irpwta, morning-tide or morning (John xviii. 28).
Of the other divisions of the natural day into four quadrants (Neh. ix. 3), or into twelve hours, varying, according to the length of the day (in Palestine, from 9 hrs. 84 min. to 14 hrs. 12 min.), we cannot treat here. [DIAL ' • HOURS.] Suffice it to say, that the.Chaldee (rlw) (Dan. iii. 6, 15 ; iv. 16) which at a later period is used for hour, in the O. T. signifies merely moment—a meaning which it has retained along with the later one ; and that in the N. T. the word hour is often used for a whole watch (Matt. xxv. 13, etc.) That, moreover, even after the division of the day into distinct hours had been fully established for gene ral purposes, it had little influence upon the ritual times, would follow from the Talmud (B. Bera
choth, 27. b). There the curious incident is re corded, that the Jews had, on one occasion, entered the synagogue for the purpose of reading the evening prayers for the termination of the Sab bath, some hours before sunset, and only became aware of their error when, on leaving the syna gogue, they perceived the sun, which had in the meantime broken through the clouds.
The word Day is further used in the Bible in the general sense of time (Gen. xlvii. 8), of misfortune (Ps. xxxvii. 13), of divine judgment (Joel i. 15 ; Matt. vii. 22), a feast-day or birth-day (Hos. vii. 5 ; Job iii. I), and pluralder in the sense of a full number of days, i., of a month (Gen. xxix. 14), a year (Is. xxxii. ro). On some other acceptations of the word—common to most languages—it is un necessary to enlarge.
The days of the week had no special names as they had with the Romans, and, perhaps, with the Egyptians ; but were designated according to their numerical order in relation to the Sabbath.—E. D.