Night

Night is named at creation as the divine designation for darkness, set in fixed alternation with day and assigned its own rulers among the heavenly lights. From that ordering Scripture draws the time of meditation and song, the watches kept by armies and worshipers, the figurative speech of prophets and apostles for ignorance, judgment, and the receding age, and at last the new-creation clause in which night has no place.

Day And Night At Creation

The first naming-act in Genesis assigns the word: "And [the Speech of] God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day" (Gen 1:5). On the fourth day the lights are appointed as rulers over the two portions: "And [the Speech of] God made the two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night and the stars" (Gen 1:16), "and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good" (Gen 1:18). The night is therefore not a residue but a named portion with its own appointed light-bearers and its own continuing speech: "Day to day gushes out speech, And night to night shows knowledge" (Ps 19:2).

Meditation And Song At Night

The Psalter takes the night as time for memory, song, and search. "I sang in the night: With my own heart I meditate; And my spirit makes diligent search" (Ps 77:6). The bed becomes a place of remembrance: "When I remember you on my bed, [And] meditate on [your Speech] in the night-watches" (Ps 63:6). The watcher anticipates each watch in order to meditate: "My eyes anticipated the night-watches, That I might meditate on [your Speech]" (Ps 119:148). Even when the surrounding light fails, the night does not cut off the speaker from God: "If I say, Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light about me will be night" (Ps 139:11). Lamentations turns the same hours into a posture of intercession: "Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches; Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord: Lift up your hands toward him for the soul of your young children" (Lam 2:19).

Worship And Prayer At Night

Night is also a station of formal worship. The pilgrim psalm calls the slaves of Yahweh who serve through the dark hours: "Look, bless⁺ Yahweh, all you⁺ slaves of Yahweh, Who by night stand in the house of Yahweh" (Ps 134:1). In the Gospels, the practice is taken up by Jesus before the choosing of the twelve: "And it came to pass in these days, that he went out into the mountain to pray; and he continued all night in prayer to God" (Luke 6:12).

The Watches Of The Night

The night is divided into watches. Yahweh acts upon the Egyptians "in the morning watch" through the pillar of fire and cloud (Exod 14:24), and Saul's relief of Jabesh comes "in the morning watch" (1Sam 11:11). Gideon's three companies attack "in the beginning of the middle watch, when they had but newly set the watch" (Judg 7:19). The Lord's parable assumes the same division: "And if he will come in the second watch, and if in the third, and find [them] so, blessed are those [slaves]" (Luke 12:38).

Watchman, What Of The Night?

The prophets speak of judgment as a night that falls in a single hour. "The burden of Moab. For in a night Ar of Moab is laid waste, [and] brought to nothing; for in a night Kir of Moab is laid waste, [and] brought to nothing" (Isa 15:1). Dumah's oracle takes the form of a question put to the watchman and his cryptic reply: "One calls to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning comes, and also the night: if you⁺ will inquire, inquire⁺: turn⁺, come⁺" (Isa 21:11-12). In John, the same image marks the limit set on labor: "We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day: the night comes, when no man can work" (John 9:4).

Night As The Sphere Of Ignorance And Sin

The apostolic letters use night as the type of the dark-works sphere that the gospel age is leaving behind. "The night is far spent, and the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light" (Rom 13:12). Belonging is set on the day-side: "for you⁺ are all sons of light, and sons of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness" (1Th 5:5). Night and day stand as paired spheres, and the church is predicated to the day.

Night Marches In The Maccabean Wars

Maccabean narrative records the practical use of night for movement and concealment in war. After Bosor, Judas's force "removed from there by night, and went until they came to the fortress" (1Ma 5:29). Antiochus marches at first light toward Bethzacharam (1Ma 6:33). Jonathan, warned that the enemy "designed to come upon them in the night" (1Ma 12:26), commands "his men to watch, and to be in arms all night long ready to fight, and he set sentinels round about the camp" (1Ma 12:27); the ruse holds, "for they saw the lights burning" (1Ma 12:29). A later attempt by Tryphon is undone by weather: "Tryphon made ready all his horsemen to come that night: but there fell a very great snow, and he did not come because of the snow" (1Ma 13:22).

No Night There

The new-creation visions remove night altogether. Of the holy city the seer writes, "And her gates will in no way be shut by day (for there will be no night there)" (Rev 21:25). The clause is repeated and made absolute: "And there will be no more night; and they need no light of lamp, neither light of sun; for Yahweh God will give them light: and they will reign forever and ever" (Rev 22:5). The portion God named at creation is, in the end, withdrawn, and the divine light replaces lamp and sun.