Darkness
אֲפֵלָהStrong’s H0653aphelah (a-phe-lah)
Appears in 10 verses of the Old Testament
In short
Aphelah is the Hebrew word usually translated “gloom”, “darkness” and “like darkness”. It appears in 10 verses of the Old Testament.
“And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days:”
Meaning
- Darkness, gloominess, calamity
- Wickedness (fig.)
How it's translated
- and gloom 3
- in the darkness 2
- darkness 1
- like darkness 1
- and darkness 1
- and gloom your 1
- in gloom 1
Word-by-word English from the STEPBible tagged text.
Where it's used most
- Isaiah 3
- Proverbs 2
- Exodus 1
- Deuteronomy 1
- Jeremiah 1
- Joel 1
7 books in all.
Explore in Scripture
- Deuteronomy 28:29And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee.
- Proverbs 4:19The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not at what they stumble.
- Proverbs 7:9In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night:
- Isaiah 8:22And they shall look unto the earth; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness.
- Isaiah 58:10And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon day:
- Isaiah 59:9Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.
Hebrew dictionary
אֲפֵלָה aphelah · darkness
1) darkness, gloominess, calamity 2) wickedness (fig.)
From STEPBible’s Hebrew lexicon (based on Brown-Driver-Briggs).
Webster's 1828 Dictionary
How the English word “darkness” was understood when the King James Version was still the common Bible of English readers.
D'ARKNESS, noun
- Absence of light.“And darkness was on the face of the deep” Genesis 1:2
- Obscurity; want of clearness or perspicuity; that quality or state which renders any thing difficult to be understood; as the darkness of counsels.
- A state of being intellectually clouded; ignorance.“Men loved darkness rather than light” John 3:19
- A private place; secrecy; privacy.“What I tell in darkness that speak ye in light” Matthew 10:27
All definitions
- Infernal gloom; hell; as utter darkness Matthew 22:13
- Great trouble and distress; calamities; perplexities.“A day of clouds and thick darkness Is” Joel 2:2
- Empire of Satan.“Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness” Colossians 1:13
- Opakeness.
Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). Verse references are checked against the KJV. Read the full entry.
Verses are from the King James Version. Word meanings come from the original Hebrew, not from any one translation.