Topic
Blackness
13 passages cited, from 2 classic reference works.
These works date from 1896–1915 and are in the public domain. They reflect the Protestant scholarship of their time: their history, archaeology and dates can be out of date, and where they interpret, other traditions read the text differently. The verses are shown in the King James Version, the wording these works were written against.
The verses
The passages the works cite, those cited by more of them first.
- Exodus 10:21ISBE
¶ And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt.
- Exodus 19:16–19ISBE
¶ And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled. And Moses brought forth the…
- Exodus 20:18ISBE
¶ And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.
- Job 3:5ISBE
Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.
- Job 30:30Nave FIGURATIVE
My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat.
- Isaiah 50:3ISBE
I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering.
- Joel 2:6Nave FIGURATIVE
Before their face the people shall be much pained: all faces shall gather blackness.
- Hebrews 12:18ISBE
For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest,
- 2 Peter 2:4ISBE
For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
- 2 Peter 2:17ISBE
These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever.
- Jude 1:1Nave FIGURATIVE — Blackness of darkness
Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called:
- Jude 1:6ISBE
And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
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- Jude 1:13 ISBE
In the reference works
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915) · 10 references
(kimririm, "obscurations"; qadhruth, "darkness"; gnophos, "darkness" zophos "blackness"): Terms rarely used but of special significance in picturing the fearful gloom and blackness of moral darkness and calamity. Job, cursing, the day of his birth, wishes that it, a dies ater ("dead black day"), might be swallowed up in darkness (Job 3:5). Because of Israel's spiritual infidelity Yahweh clothes the heavens with the blackness of sackcloth (Isa 50:3), the figure being that of the inky blackness of ominous, terrifying thunder clouds. The fearful judgment against sin under the old dispensation is illustrated by the appalling blackness that enveloped smoking, burning, quaking Sinai at the giving of the law (Heb 12:18; compare Ex 19:16-19; 20:18). The horror of darkness culminates in the impenetrable blackness of the under-world, the eternal abode of fallen angels and riotously immoral and ungodly men (Jude 1:13; see also Jude 1:6 and 2Pe 2:4,17). Human language is here too feeble to picture the m oral gloom and rayless night of the lost: "Pits (the King James Version "chains") of darkness" (compare the ninth plague of Egypt, "darkness which may be felt" (Ex 10:21)). Wicked men are "wandering stars," comets that disappear in "blackness of darkness .... reserved for ever." In art this figurative language has found majestic and awe-inspiring expression in Dore's illustrations of Dante's Purgatory and Milton's Paradise Lost.
Dwight M. Pratt
In the topical indexes
Texts: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915); Nave's Topical Bible (1896), from the CrossWire SWORD modules (public domain). Verse references were parsed from the works' own markup and checked against the KJV verse list.