TR: ʻereb → hespéra (Evening / Dusk)

The Chain

Hebrew OT             LXX (Greek OT)          Greek NT
──────────────────    ──────────────────────   ──────────────────
עֶרֶב (ʻereb)      →  ἑσπέρα (hespéra)     →  ἑσπέρα (hespéra)
H6153, 125x in OT     LXX co-occ: 96x          3x in NT
"evening, dusk"        PMI score: 33.72         "evening, eventide"

OT Usage (Hebrew)

Strong's	Word	Occurrences	Primary Meaning
H6153	עֶרֶב (ʻereb)	125	evening, dusk — the onset of darkness marking the start of a new day
H6150	עָרַב (ʻârab)	3	root verb: to grow dusky, to become evening

Key OT passages: - Gen 1:5 — "And the evening and the morning were the first day" — establishes the sunset-to-sunrise day order - Exo 12:6 — "the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening" — Passover timing - Dan 8:14 — "Unto two thousand and three hundred days (ʻereb-boqer)" — the evening-morning unit as a day

See H6153-ereb.md for full canonical study.

LXX Bridge

Hebrew	Greek Translation	Co-occ	PMI	Notes
ʻereb (H6153)	ἑσπέρα (G2073)	96x	33.72	Primary equivalent — highly consistent rendering
ʻereb (H6153)	πρωΐ (G4404)	34x	18.88	Co-occurrence only: "morning" appears in same verses
ʻereb (H6153)	ἀκάθαρτος (G169)	31x	19.19	Co-occurrence only: Levitical purity law clusters

Semantic continuity: The LXX translation is unusually consistent. G2073 ἑσπέρα (from hesperos, "western / evening") maps cleanly onto ʻereb with virtually no semantic shift — both refer to the same natural phenomenon (onset of dusk / beginning of night). The Hebrew theological weight of ʻereb (evening as the start of a day) carries directly into LXX contexts.

NT Usage (Greek)

Strong's	Word	Occurrences	Primary Meaning
G2073	ἑσπέρα (hespéra)	3	evening, eventide
G3798	ὄψιος (ópsios)	~15	late, toward evening — the more common NT word for "evening"
G3796	ὀψέ (opsé)	4	late (adv.), at the close of day

Key NT passages: - Luke 24:29 — "But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening (ἑσπέρα), and the day is far spent" — ἑσπέρα on the road to Emmaus, echoing the day-boundary significance - Acts 4:3 — "And they laid hands on them, and put them in hold unto the next day: for it was now eventide (ἑσπέρα)" — time marker in narrative

Continuity and Shifts

What stays the same: - The core referent — the onset of darkness, dusk — is identical in Hebrew and Greek - G2073 ἑσπέρα faithfully carries the LXX sense directly into NT Luke and Acts (both by Luke) - The day-boundary significance (evening begins the new day) is presupposed in NT Passover/Sabbath timing texts (though ὄψιος is used more often there)

What shifts: - In the NT, ὄψιος (G3798) largely displaces ἑσπέρα for "evening" in narrative contexts (used ~15x vs ἑσπέρα's 3x) - The dense Levitical ritual function ("unclean until evening") does not carry into NT Greek, since purity law purification language shifts to different vocabulary - The Hebrew "evening-morning" (ʻereb-boqer) compound unit of Dan 8:14 has no Greek NT parallel phrasing

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Generated from: gather_trace_data.py, gather_word_data.py Last updated: 2026-04-02