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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJames Hastings Dictionary of the Bible: Dayspring
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DAYSPRING.—An old English expression denoting the dawn (‘the day sprynge or dawnynge of the daye gyveth a certeyne lyght before the rysinge of the sonne,’ Eden, Decades, 1555, p. 264). It occurs in Job_38:12 ‘Hast thou … caused the dayspring to know his place?’; Wis_16:28 ‘at the dayspring pray unto thee’ (RV [Note: Revised Version.] ‘at the dawning of the day’). Virtually the same expression occurs in Jdg_19:25 and 1Sa_9:26; cf. also Gen_32:24 and Psa_65:8 (east and west called ‘the outgoings of the morning and evening’). In Luk_1:78 the expression ‘dayspring from on high’ probably goes back to a Heb. original which was a well-understood personal designation of the Messiah (combining the ideas of ‘light’ and ‘sprout’); it would then be a poetical equivalent for ‘Messiah from heaven.’
G. H. Box.