ight (Eccl. xii. 2; Isa. xiii. 10; Ezek.
xxxii. 7; Joel ii. 10, 31, and iii. 15; and Hab. iii. 11) the word
_yar[=e]ach_ is employed. A slight variant of the same word indicates
the month when viewed as a period of time not quite defined, and not in
the strict sense of a lunar month. This is the term used in Exod. ii. 2,
for the three months that the mother of Moses hid him when she saw that
he was a goodly child; by Moses, in his prophecy for Joseph, of "Blessed
of the Lord be his land . . . for the precious fruits brought forth by
the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the months." Such a
"full month of days" did Shallum the son of Jabesh reign in Samaria in
the nine and thirtieth year of Uzziah, king of Judah. Such also were the
twelve months of warning given to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon,
before his madness fell upon him. The same word is once used for a true
lunar month, viz. in Ezra vi. 15, when the building of the "house was
finished on the third day of the month Adar, which was in the sixth year
of the reign of Darius the king." In all other references to the months
derived from the Babylonians, such as the "month Chisleu" in Neh. i. 1,
the term _chodesh_ is used, since these, like the Hebrew months, were
defined by the observation of the new moon; but for the Tyrian months,
Zif, Bul, Ethanim, we find the term _yerach_ in three out of the four
instances.

In three instances a third word is used poetically to express the moon.
This is _lebanah_, which has the meaning of whiteness. In Song of Sol.
vi. 10, it is asked--

"Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the
moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?"

Isaiah also says--

"Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when
the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem,
and before His ancients gloriously."

And yet again--

"Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the
sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light
of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach
of His people, and healeth the stroke of their wound."

It may not be without significance that each of these three passages,
wherein the moon is denominated by its name of whiteness or purity,
looks forward prophetically to the same great event, pictured yet more
clearly in the Revelation--

"And I heard as it were the voic