DAY (יﯴמ֒, H3427; ἡμέρα, G2465). The Bible includes a number of different uses of the word. 1. It often refers to the hours of daylight between dawn and dusk (Gen 1:5; 8:22; Acts 20:31; etc.). In OT times this was divided into morning, noon, and evening (Ps 55:17), or the time of the day might be indicated by the use of such expressions as sunrise, heat of the day, cool of the day, sunset, and the like. The Babylonians reckoned their days from sunrise to sunrise; the Romans, from midnight to midnight; the Greeks and the Jews, from sunset to sunset. The first mention in the Bible of a twelve-hour day is found in John 11:9. The division of the day into twelve-hour periods came from the Babylonians.

2. The concept of a legal or civil day, the period between two successive sun risings, goes back to the creation story (Gen 1:14, 19) and is found throughout the Bible (Luke 9:37; Acts 21:26). The only day of the week to which the Jews gave a name was the Sabbath; they used ordinal numbers for the days, although the day before the Sabbath was often called the day of Preparation (Matt 27:62; Mark 15:42; Luke 23:54; John 19:31, 42). The night was subdivided into watches—first, middle, and morning. The Romans had four watches. Acts 23:23 shows that the night also was divided into twelve hours.

3. The word often is used in the sense of an indefinite period of time: the whole creative period (Gen 2:4), day of God’s wrath (Job 20:28), day of trouble (Ps 20:1), day of the Lord of hosts (Isa 2:12), day of salvation (2 Cor 6:2) day of Jesus Christ (Phil 1:6).

The pl. is sometimes used in the sense of “time of,” as in the “days of Abraham” (Gen 26:18), the “days of Noah” (Matt 24:37), or of the span of human life, as in “the days of Adam...were eight hundred years” (Gen 5:4), “I will lengthen your days” (1 Kings 3:14).

The eternal God is called “the Ancient of Days” (Dan 7:9, 13).

4. Many times the word is used fig. When Jesus said, “We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work” (John 9:4), “day” means the time of opportunity for service. Jesus said that because His disciples saw “the light of this world” as they walked “in the day” (John 11:9), and He Himself claimed to be “the light of the world” (John 8:12). Paul called Christians “sons of light and sons of the day,” contrasting them with those who were “of the night or of darkness” (1 Thess 5:5). When Paul wrote, “the night is far gone, the day is at hand” (Rom 13:12), he meant by “day” the time of eschatological salvation. There will be perpetual day in the final state of perfection (Rev 21:25).

5. There are special days set aside for and belonging in a peculiar sense to Jehovah, such as the Sabbath day (Gen 2:3; Exod 20:8-11), the Passover (Exod 12:14), and the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:29-31). On these days no labor was to be done and special rituals were observed.

6. In both Testaments is frequent mention of “the day of the Lord” and similar terms used to designate it. This is not a particular day, but a period of time at the end of history when God will bring judgment upon godless peoples and vindicate His name (Isa 2:12; 13:9; Ezek 7:7, 8; Matt 24; 25; 2 Thess 2:1-12). After this supernatural intervention of God in history, He will set up His eternal kingdom (Rev 20-22), and all things will be consummated in Christ (Eph 1:10).

7. The phrase, “the last days,” seems to include in its broadest meaning the whole period from the cross to the Second Advent (Acts 2:17; 2 Tim 3:1; Heb 1:2; 2 Peter 3:3, 4).

Bibliography Crem (1892), 275-277; BDB (1952), 398-401; O. Cullmann, Christ and Time (1950); Arndt (1957), 346-348; W. G. Kummel, Promise and Fulfilment (1961); TWNT, II (1964), 243-253.