the Week of Proper 25 / Ordinary 30
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Bible Dictionaries
Morning
Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words
or A. Noun.
Bôqer (בֹּקֶר, Strong's #1242), “morning.” This word occurs about 214 times and in every period of biblical Hebrew.
This word means “morning,” though not the period of time before noon. Rather it indicates the point of time at which night is changing to day or that time at the end of night: “And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day, and all that night; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts” (Exod. 10:13).
Bôqer can represent the time just before the rising of the sun. In Judg. 19:25 we read that the men of Gibeah raped and abused the Levite’s concubine “all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go” (cf. Ruth 3:13). In the ancient Near East the night was divided into three watches. The last period of the night was called the morning watch (Exod. 14:24). It lasted from 2:00 A.M. until sunrise, and in such a context the word indicates this period of time.
Bôqer can mean “daybreak” or “dawn.” In Exod. 14:27 it is reported that the water of the Red Sea “returned to his [normal state] when the morning appeared [literally, “at the turning of the morning”].” Bôqer is used as a synonym of “dawn” in Job 38:12: “Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place …?”
Sometimes bôqer appears to mean “early morning,” or shortly after daybreak: “And Joseph came in unto them in the morning, and looked upon them and, behold, they were sad” (Gen. 40:6). Thus, Moses “rose up early in the morning” and went up to Mount Sinai; he arose before daybreak so he could appear before God in the “morning” as God had commanded (Exod. 34:2, 4). In the “morning” Jacob saw that his bride was Leah rather than Rachel (Gen. 29:25; cf. 1 Sam. 29:10).
As the opposite of night the word represents the entire period of daylight. The psalmist prays that it is good “to show forth thy loving-kindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night” (Ps. 92:2), in other words, to always be praising God (cf. Amos 5:8).
In Ps. 65:8 bôqer represents a place, specifically, the place where the sun rises: “They also that dwell in the uttermost parts are afraid at thy tokens: thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice.”
At least once the word appears to represent the resurrection: “Like sheep they [the ungodly] are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them; and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning …” (Ps. 49:14).
Bôqer can mean “morrow” or “next day.” This meaning first appears in Exod. 12:10, where God tells Israel not to leave any of the Passover “until the morning; and that which remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire” (cf. Lev. 22:30).
B. Verb.
Bâqar (בָּקַר, Strong's #1239), “to attend, bestow care on, seek with pleasure.” Although this verb is found only 7 times in biblical Hebrew, it occurs in early, middle, and late periods and in both prose and poetry. The word has cognates in Arabic and Nabataean. Some scholars relate to this verb the noun bâqar, “herd, cattle, ox.”
In Lev. 13:36 bâqar means “to attend to”: “… If the scall be spread in the skin, the priest shall not seek for yellow hair.…” The word implies “to seek with pleasure or delight” in Ps. 27:4: “… to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.”
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Vines, W. E., M. A. Entry for 'Morning'. Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/vot/m/morning.html. 1940.
