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Bible Dictionaries
Day
American Tract Society Bible Dictionary
or The day is distinguished into natural, civil, and artificial. The natural day is one revolution of the earth on its axis. The civil day is that, the beginning and the end of which are determined by the custom of any nation. The Hebrews began their day in the evening, Leviticus 23:32; the Babylonians at sunrise; and we begin at midnight. The artificial day is the time of the sun's continuance above the horizon, which is unequal according to different seasons, on account of the obliquity of the equator. The sacred writers generally divide the day into twelve hours. The sixth hour always ends at noon throughout the year; and the twelfth hour is the last hour before sunset. But in summer, all the hours of the day were longer than in winter, while those of night were shorter. See HOURS , and THREE .
The word day is also often put for an indeterminate period, for the time of Christ's coming in the flesh, and of his second coming to judgment, Isaiah 2:12 Ezekiel 13:5 John 11:24 1 Thessalonians 5:2 . The prophetic "day" usually is to be understood as one year, and the prophetic "year" or "time" as 360 days, Ezekiel 4:6 . Compare the three and half years of Daniel 7:25 , with the forty-two months and twelve hundred and sixty days of Revelation 11:2,3 .
These files are public domain and are a derivative of the topics are from American Tract Society Bible Dictionary published in 1859.
Rand, W. W. Entry for 'Day'. American Tract Society Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/ats/d/day.html. 1859.
