Hours

HOURS. The ancient Hebrews did not divide the Day by Hours. The Day was divided into four parts; Morning, Highday or Noon, the first Evening and the last Evening; and the Night was divided Lament. ii. 19. Judg. vii. 19. Exod. xxiv. 24.into three parts, Night, Mid-night, and the Morning-watch. If we find sometimes the word Hours in the Septuagint, it signifies the Seasons, as in Homer and Hesiod.

The word Hours occurs often in the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament: for example, Pluam cras hâ ipsâ Exod. ix. 28.horâ grandinem. And, Liberi qui eâdem horâ nati sunt, &c. And, Hâc eâdem horâ, ego tradam omnes istos vulnerandos in conspectu Israel, &c. And in Daniel, Quâcunque horâ audiveritis sonitum, &c. In Tobit, Quasi dimidiam fere horam. And, Prostrati per horas tres. And Judith, Per multas horas unâ voce clamaverunt ad Deum, &c. But in the books of Moses, and the other writings in Hebrew, Hora is used for the precise time or season¹. In Daniel, we find the word Schaata, which is translated Hour, and may be derived from the verb scaah, which signifies to cease, to be at rest.

The books of Daniel, Tobit, and Judith are the first wherein we find the word Hour mentioned expressly in the sense we give it, or rather in the sense wherein the Ancients construed it, who made use of it both in Greek and Latin to signify a part either of the day or night. Daniel iv. 16. says, he was about an Hour considering the meaning of King Nebuchadnezzar’s Vision. Tobit, xi. 14. tells us, that he continued about half an Hour in very great pain, after which the pearl fell from his eyes. The same Tobit relates, xii. 22. that after the Angel Raphaël had declared to him, and his son Tobias, who he was, they prostrated themselves before him, and remained in this posture for about two Hours. Judith vii. 18. declares, that the people of Bethulia being met together in the Synagogue, spent many Hours in crying to the Lord, beseeching him to deliver them from the hands of Holofernes. The Hebrew text does not speak particularly of Hours, but only of Lines or Degrees; as where it mentions Ahaz’s Dial, or the retrogradation of the Sun on this Sun-dial. But however it may be expressed in the text, it is certain that Hours, and the division of the Day into several parts, is the matter there in question. Now Ahaz is much more ancient than either Daniel, Tobit, or Judith.

John xi. 9. and Matth. xx. 3, 4, 5.But what were the Hours mentioned in these books? this is very difficult to determine with any certainty. The sacred Writers do not inform us; there is no Chaldee or Syriac Author remaining, of any great antiquity, to give us an account of them; and the Greeks, who in matters of profound erudition, and the most remote antiquity, are our best authorities next to the sacred Writings, knew nothing of the original of Hours among foreign nations, and trace it no higher among themselves than the time of Anaximenes or Anaximander, who lived in the reign of Cyrus, towards the end of the Babylonish captivity. This Author had travelled into Chaldæa, and might very well have learned from thence the manner of dividing the Day by Hours. Herodotus, who lived in the reign of Xerxes², says expressly, that the Greeks received from the Babylonians the use of Gnomons and Dials. And Xenophon³, who followed young Cyrus in his expedition, introduces Euthydemus saying, that the Sun, which is luminous, discovers to us the Hours of the Day, and the Stars the Hours of the Night. Aristophanes⁴, who lived in the time of Socrates, speaks likewise of the solar Gnomon or Index, and of Hours. He makes one of his Actors ask what a-clock it is by the Sun-dial? The Reader may see our remarks under the word DIALS.

The result of what we have said is this, that the use of Clocks or Sun-dials, and the distribution of the Day into several Hours, is more ancient among the Eastern people than among the Greeks; that the Author of this invention is not known, and that the first monument we are acquainted with, which speaks in an express manner of it, is the second book of Kings, chap. xx. where we have an account of the Sun’s retrogradation on Ahaz’s dial; and lastly, that we cannot tell in what manner the ancient Babylonians, Chaldeans, and Hebrews, divided their Hours of the Day and Night; whether they were equal or unequal.

In the books of the New Testament we see very clearly the Day divided into twelve equal Hours, after the manner of the Greeks and Romans. These Hours were equal to each other, but unequal with respect to the different seasons. The twelve Hours of the longest days in summer were much longer than those of the shortest Days in winter. The first Hour was that which followed the rising of the Sun, and was answerable to our six a-clock in the Morning in the Equinox; and to other times in proportion to the length or shortness of the Days. The third Hour was answerable to nine a-clock of the Morning in the Equinox; the sixth at all times to Noon; and so on. In the New Testament we observe Matth. xiv. 25. Mark vi. 48. xiii. 35.likewise the Night to be divided into four Watches; a custom which the Jews had borrowed from the Romans.

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