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Bible Dictionaries
Lamp
Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary
or λαμπας . There is frequent mention of lamps in Scripture, and the word is often used figuratively. The houses in the east were, from the remotest antiquity, lighted with lamps; and hence it is so common in Scripture to call every thing which enlightens the body or mind, which guides or refreshes, by the name of a lamp. These lamps were sustained by a large candlestick set upon the ground. The houses of Egypt, in modern times, are never without lights: they burn lamps all the night long, and in every occupied apartment. So requisite to the comfort of a family is this custom reckoned, or so imperious is the power which it exercises, that the poorest people would rather retrench part of their food than neglect it. As this custom no doubt prevailed in Egypt and the adjacent regions of Arabia and Palestine in former times, it imparts a beauty and force to some passages of Scripture which have been little observed. Thus, in the language of Jeremiah, to extinguish the light in an apartment is a convertible phrase for total destruction; and nothing can more properly and emphatically represent the total destruction of a city than the extinction of the lights: "I will take from them the light of a candle, and this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment." Job describes the destruction of a family among the Arabs, and the desolation of their dwellings, in the very language of the prophet: "How oft is the candle of the wicked put out, and how oft cometh their destruction upon them!" Job 21:17 . Bildad expresses the same idea in the following beautiful passage: "Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out, and the spark of his fire shall not shine. The light shall be dark in his tabernacle, and his candle shall be put out with him," Job 18:5-6 . A burning lamp is, on the other hand, the chosen symbol of prosperity, a beautiful instance of which occurs in the complaint of Job: "O that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness," Job 29:2-3 . When the ten tribes were taken from Rehoboam, and given to his rival, Jehovah promised to reserve one tribe, and assigns this reason: "That David my servant may have a light always before me in Jerusalem," 1 Kings 11:36 . In many parts of the east, and in particular in the Indies, instead of torches and flambeaux, they carry a pot of oil in one hand, and a lamp full of oily rags in the other.
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Watson, Richard. Entry for 'Lamp'. Richard Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/wtd/l/lamp.html. 1831-2.
