ἐπέφωσκε, was about to dawn, illucescebat, Vulgate. The evening is meant, and the word seems inappropriate. Lk. may have used it as if he had been speaking of a natural day (as in Matthew 28:1) by a kind of inadvertence, or it may have been used with reference to the candles lit in honour of the day, or following the Jewish custom of calling the night light justified by the text, Psalms 148:3, “Praise Him, all ye stars of light ” (vide Lightfoot, Hor. Heb.). Or it may be a touch of poetry, likening the rising of the moon to a dawn. So Casaubon, Exercit. anti-Baronianae, p. 416.

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Old Testament