Isaiah 30:26

Hebrew Bible

24 The oxen and donkeys used in plowing will eat seasoned feed winnowed with a shovel and pitchfork. 25 On every high mountain and every high hill there will be streams flowing with water, at the time of great slaughter when the fortified towers collapse. 26 The light of the full moon will be like the sun’s glare, and the sun’s glare will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven days, when the Lord binds up his people’s fractured bones and heals their severe wound. 27 Look, the name of the Lord comes from a distant place in raging anger and awesome splendor. He speaks angrily, and his word is like destructive fire. 28 His battle cry overwhelms like a flooding river that reaches one’s neck. He shakes the nations in a sieve that isolates the chaff; he puts a bit into the mouth of the nations and leads them to destruction.

1 Enoch 72:37

Pseudepigrapha

34 So it comes that its course becomes daily longer, and its course nightly shorter. 35 And this is the law and the course of the sun, and his return as often as he returns sixty times and rises, i.e. the great luminary which is named the sun, for ever and ever. 36 And that which (thus) rises is the great luminary, and is so named according to its appearance, according as the Lord commanded. 37 As he rises, so he sets and decreases not, and rests not, but runs day and night, and his light is sevenfold brighter than that of the moon; but as regards size they are both equal.

 Notes and References

"... As is obvious to the most casual observer, the day is inseparable from the sun. The Sumerian ideogram, taken over into Akkadian, indicates both the sun (UTU, 'samsu/samas') and the day (U4, 'umu'). So, too, in the biblical material, the association between the sun, the light and the day, is explicit ... (This ratio of relative brightness of full moon to sun was apparently well known, compare 1 Enoch 72:37 ... In 1 Enoch this ratio is presented as 'scientific fact', whereas in Isaiah 30:26 it is embedded in eschatological imagery) ... The rhythms of life are dictated by the sun's position and apparent motion across the sky. While the position of the sun along the horizon determines the annual agricultural cycle, its diurnal appearance and disappearance punctuate the human cycles of activity and rest. Lacking costly means of artificial illumination, ancient peoples relied upon the sun to provide light and scheduled their lives accordingly ..."

Robbins, Ellen Studies in the Prehistory of the Jewish Calendar (pp. 2-3) New York University, 1989

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