When considering the lighting needs of the ancient world, Bible students sometimes think of hunter-gatherers clustered around an open fire in a cave-like setting. Indeed, this was the case in the very distant past. Folks retired for the night not long after the sun set and then rose when the new day dawned.
No wonder Methuselah lived so long! Rest is restorative.
Archaeology indicates that as early as the Stone Age (which ended circa 3500 BC), simple stone or shell lamps existed. They continued to be in use until pottery lamps such as the one pictured here came on the scene. About the size of the palm of your hand, the ceramic lamps were filled with olive oil or animal fat and used a crude wick to connect and direct oil to a spout where there was a flame. In the Land of Israel and the Mediterranean region, residents employed pottery or terra cotta lamps starting around 2000 BC.
Which brings us to Psalm 27:1, where the Scripture states that the Lord is our light, using the generic Hebrew word “ohr” for light. However, other verses refer to candles and lamps, such as Proverbs 20:27: “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts…” (KJV). Did candles exist at this time?
Basically, no.
The Bible translators of 1620 used a modern gloss to describe a situation from millennia before. Made sense to them since the word in Hebrew was “ner”, or lamp, and candles were the lamps of the seventeenth century. Yet, candles were not in use in King David’s time of approximately 1000 BC.
Houston, we have a problem….
It would be similar to saying that Joseph was thrown into a pit and along came a group of employment agency workers, rather than slave traders, who sold him into service in Egypt. Yes, they engaged in brokering human beings, but one way of approaching the subject would be more easy to understand for a modern audience.
This carries us by camel-train back to the topic of candles (you’re keeping up with this commentary, right?) which were not invented until around 500 BC by the Romans. They dipped them in tallow (animal fat) and the rest was history. We find candle molds in archaeology, in case you’re wondering how a somewhat delicate candle could survive and tell us its story.
So… Proverbs written by King Solomon in about the tenth century or 900s BC. Candles invented 400 years later.
Solomon. Candles.
900s. 500s.
Change anything much in the way of what the Bible is really saying?
Not much. A different way of expressing the same idea. Candles, oil lamps, cooking fires. Flashlights, headlights, halogen lights, searchlights.
Light. Let there be light.
Let His light shine and illuminate the undefined edges of our existence dipped in the tinted shade of twilight. In Him there is no darkness at all.
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