The 2300 Days | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 12, 1866

The 2300 Days.

BRO. W. BRUIN writes: "I have troubled myself for some time about Daniel viii, 14. I could not feel at home with your calculations, and the theory based upon them. I find in the Hebrew not yamim, as in chapter xii, 11, 12, yamim, but evening and morning, (erev boker) as in verse 26, where it is literally translated in the English version the evening and the morning. The same we meet in Gen. i, 5; literally, and it had been (erev) evening, and it had been (boker) morning, the first day! So we get, according to the original, 1150 literal days! Not prophetic days! How is that?"

REMARKS.

On the question here introduced, there are a number of sources from which light may be obtained. If the expression "evening and morning" is synonymous with the word "day," then we can attach to it a prophetic signification, the same as to the latter, and it becomes a matter of complete indifference which is used.

1. On the definition of these words we find the following in Gesenius. Under the word evening, he gives the expression "evening and morning" (geh-rev boh-ker, according to the spelling given in the Hebrew Concordance) and defines it, "a day and night, that is, the civil day of 24 hours. Dan. viii, 14." The word "day" (yohm) is defined by the same author as follows: "Day, so called from the diurnal heat. Spoken of the natural day from the rising to the setting of the sun, opp. the night; also of the civil day, or 24 hours which includes the night."

2. Gesenius makes the expression "evening and morning" as above, equivalent to the Greek νυχθήμερον, a word which Liddell and Scott define as meaning, "A day and night, the space of 24 hours."

3. The Greek word for day, ἡμέρα corresponding to the Hebrew yohm, is defined by Robinson thus: "A day, i. e., the time from one sunrise or sunset to another, the same as νυχθήμερον."

4. In Gen. i, 5, we read that the evening and the morning (geh-rev boh-ker) were the first day (yohm).

5. Dr. Hales in his Analysis of Chronology, Vol. i, p. 10, says: "The earliest measure of Time on record is the Day. In that most ancient and venerable account of the Creation by Moses, the process is marked by the operations of each day. The 'evening and the morning were the first day,' &c. Gen. i, 5, &c. Here the word 'day' denotes the Civil or Calendar day of 24 hours, including 'the evening' or natural night, and 'the morning' or natural day; while the sun is either below or above the horizon of any place, in the course of the earth's diurnal rotation, between two successive appulsnes of the same meridian to the sun; corresponding, therefore, to a solar day in astronomy.

"It is remarkable, that the 'evening,' or natural night, precedes the 'morning,' or natural day, in the Mosaic account. Hence the Hebrew compound 'Evening-morning,' is used by the prophet Daniel, to denote a civil day, in his famous chronological prophecy of the 2300 days, Dan. viii, 14. And also the Greek compound νυχθήμερον, to denote the same. And hence Hesiod, the eldest of the Greek poets that have reached us, represents the occultation of the Pleiades as lasting νυκτας τε και ήματα τεσσαράκοντα, 'forty nights and days,' i. e., calendar days. And following the primeval order, the ancient Gauls and Germans, counted times and seasons by the number of nights, not of days; as we learn from Cæsar and Tacitus; a usage still retained by their descendants; for in old French, anuit signifies to-day; and in English, sevennight, fortnight, 'seven days,' 'fourteen days.' Thus is sacred history verified by primitive tradition, handed down to the present times; 'the night seeming to usher in the day.'"

6. The Septuagint in Dan. viii, 14, expresses the word days in the text, the same as in verses 11 and 12 of chap. xii, showing how the seventy learned Jews understood the original Hebrew, two hundred and eighty-five years before Christ.

From all these authorities, it is impossible to conclude otherwise than that, although the literal Hebrew of Dan. viii, 14, is "evening morning," according to the margin, it means precisely the same as though the other expression for day (yohm) had there been used. That the expression is symbolic, each day standing for a year, is proved by two considerations: 1. Being in the midst of a symbolic prophecy, the days must be considered symbolic, unless we have the most positive reasons to show that they are literal; which we have not. 2. The days are evidently given to cover very nearly the whole duration of all the kingdoms mentioned in the prophecy; but taken as literal days, amounting to about six years and a half, they would not cover a portion that would be worth mentioning of the existence of even the first empire. They must therefore denote 2300 years, as all expositors agree.