Chisleu

Chisleu is the ninth month in the Israelite calendar; UPDV renders the name Kislev. The dated narratives that fall in this month show it as a winter month — late autumn rains in Jerusalem, the king's winter-house with a fire burning, and a word of Yahweh coming to a prophet on its fourth day.

The ninth month

The Ezra narrative ties the ninth month to a heavy-rain assembly: "Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered themselves together to Jerusalem within the three days; it was the ninth month, on the twentieth [day] of the month: and all the people sat in the broad place before the house of God, trembling because of this matter, and for the great rain." (Ezr 10:9). And in Jeremiah, the ninth month is named as the time when the king is in his winter quarters: "Now the king was sitting in the winter-house in the ninth month: and [there was a fire in] the brazier burning before him." (Jer 36:22).

Named as Kislev

The month appears by name in Nehemiah's opening: "The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. Now it came to pass in the month Kislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the palace," (Neh 1:1). And Zechariah dates an oracle to the fourth day of this month: "And it came to pass in the fourth year of King Darius, that the word of Yahweh came to Zechariah in the fourth [day] of the ninth month, even in Kislev." (Zec 7:1). The two names — Chisleu and Kislev — denote the same ninth month.