Between the Two Evenings

There is an expression in Hebrew that is not easy to understand in English. It is the phrase "between the two evenings." It is found eleven times in the Old Testament. It is used to describe the time when the Passover lamb was to be killed (Ex. 12:6), when the Passover was to be held (Lev. 23:5: Num. 9:3, 5, 11), when the second lamb of the daily sacrifice was to be killed (Ex. 29:39, 41; Num. 8:4, 8), when the lamps in the tabernacle were to be trimmed and the incense burned (Ex. 30:8), and when God would send quail meat to the Israelites in the wilderness (Ex. 16:12). But what were the two evenings? There are three possibilities: 1) the time in mid-afternoon when the sun begins to decline in the sky; 2) the time when the sun sets below the horizon; and 3) the time when the evening light fades into darkness. Most modern translations (including the CSB, ESV, NASB, NIV, NKJV, and NRSV) take the two evenings to be the last two and translate the phrase as "twilight." However, there is good reason to think that the two evenings are the first and the last. When Elijah had his contest with the prophets of Ba'al, they called on their god until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice (1 Kings 18:29). After that, Elijah had time that day to build an altar, call on God to send down fire, tell Ahab to go eat, pray bowed on his knees eight times, and then run before Ahab all the way from Mount Carmel to Jezreel. That was hardly after sundown. The Mishnah says that the evening sacrifice was killed at half past the eighth hour (2:30pm) and offered up at half past the ninth hour (3:30pm); however, on the day of Passover the killing and offering were moved up an hour because the Passover lambs had to be sacrificed after that (Pesahim 5.1). This indicates that the Jewish leaders understood the phrase "between the two evenings" to begin in mid-afternoon. Deuteronomy 16:6 says that the Passover was to be sacrificed at "the going down of the sun," which a number of modern translations (including the ESV, NASB, and NRSV) take to be sundown, not realizing that the expression can refer to mid-afternoon. The Passover meal was originally eaten at night (Ex. 12:8), and Jesus met with his disciples to eat the Passover when it was evening (Matt. 26:20; Mark 14:17; 1 Cor. 11:23 has night). This would indicate that the third possible meaning of evening was the second evening of "between the evenings." It is better to get understanding of difficult Bible phrases from the Bible accounts themselves rather than trust any given English translation.