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thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place
…?”
Sometimes
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appears to mean “early morning,” or shortly after daybreak: “And
Joseph came in unto them in the morning, and looked upon them and, behold, they were
sad” (Gen. 40:6). Thus, Moses “rose up early in the morning” and went up to Mount
Sinai; he arose before daybreak so he could appear before God in the “morning” as God
had commanded (Exod. 34:2, 4). In the “morning” Jacob saw that his bride was Leah
rather than Rachel (Gen. 29:25; cf. 1 Sam. 29:10).
As the opposite of night the word represents the entire period of daylight. The
psalmist prays that it is good “to show forth thy loving-kindness in the morning, and thy
faithfulness every night” (Ps. 92:2), in other words, to always be praising God (cf. Amos
5:8).
In Ps. 65:8
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represents a place, specifically, the place where the sun rises: “They
also that dwell in the uttermost parts are afraid at thy tokens: thou makest the outgoings
of the morning and evening to rejoice.”
At least once the word appears to represent the resurrection: “Like sheep they [the
ungodly] are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them; and the upright shall have
dominion over them in the morning …” (Ps. 49:14).
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can mean “morrow” or “next day.” This meaning first appears in Exod. 12:10,
where God tells Israel not to leave any of the Passover “until the morning; and that which
remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire” (cf. Lev. 22:30).
B. Verb.
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(
, 1239), “to attend, bestow care on, seek with pleasure.” Although this
verb is found only 7 times in biblical Hebrew, it occurs in early, middle, and late periods
and in both prose and poetry. The word has cognates in Arabic and Nabataean. Some
scholars relate to this verb the noun
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, “herd, cattle, ox.”
In Lev. 13:36
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means “to attend to”: “… If the scall be spread in the skin, the
priest shall not seek for yellow hair.…” The word implies “to seek with pleasure or
delight” in Ps. 27:4: “… to behold the beauty of the Lord, and
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in his temple.”
MOTHER
( , 517), “mother; grandmother; stepmother.” Cognates of this word appear in
nearly all Semitic languages including Ugaritic and Aramaic. Biblical Hebrew attests it
220 times and in all periods.
The basic meaning of the word has to do with the physical relationship of the
individual called “mother.” This emphasis of the word is in Gen. 2:24 (the first biblical
appearance): “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave
unto his wife.…”
,
sometimes represents an animal “mother”: “Likewise shalt thou do
with thine oxen, and with thy sheep: seven days it shall be with its [mother]; on the eighth
day thou shalt give it me” (Exod. 22:30). The phrase “father and mother” is the biblical
phrase for parents: “And he brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle’s daughter: for
she had neither father nor mother [living]” (Esth. 2:7). The “son of one’s mother” is his
brother (Gen. 43:29), just as the “daughter of one’s mother” is his sister (Gen. 20:12).