The important noun ημερα (emera) means day, and survives in modern English in such useful words as hemeralopia (day blindness), hemerobaptist, (someone from a Jewish sect which practiced daily ritual bathing) and hemerocallis (a lily that flowers for one mere day).

Where our word comes from isn't immediately clear but the word ημι (hemi), meaning half (hence our word hemisphere) certainly jumps to mind, specifically when we remember Jesus saying that there are twelve hours in a day (John 11:9), which is obviously half of the twenty-four we moderns are used to. That's because, unlike our English word "day", the Greek word ημερα (emera) is solely reserved for the lit half of earth's solar day, and particularly the goings on of a day (Matthew 6:34, Luke 1:23, Romans 14:5). Our word ημερα (emera) is often used juxtaposed to νυξ (nux), meaning night, or the period without legitimate activity (hence our word nocturnal; Matthew 4:2), and the two are creatively combined into the word νυχθημερον (nuchthemeron), or "night 'n-day", which covers the whole twenty-four hour cycle (see below).

Rather than exclusively denoting a stretch of clock-time of fixed length, our word ημερα (emera) may in a poetic sense denote any continual period during which legitimate activity is performed without interruption. As such our word ημερα (emera) means "uninterrupted procedure" or "routine" and may be used synonymously with "trial/hearing/test" (Acts 17:31, 1 Corinthians 4:3, 3:13). Hence Jesus submitted that he had been in the temple daily, or the whole time, while the evil of darkness continued nightly, also the whole time (Luke 22:53).

On the "the day of John's public appearance to Israel" (Luke 1:80), John may have showed up first but his initial showing up was the beginning of continued public activity. The "day of slaughter" (James 5:5), likewise, may not be associated with one particular calendar day and will probably also not last precisely twelve hours, but denotes an indefinite period of uninterrupted carnage. The same goes for the "day of judgment" (Matthew 10:5), the "day of redemption" (Ephesians 4:30), the "day of wrath and revelation" (Romans 2:5), and the "day of the Lord" (Matthew 7:22, Luke 17:24, Acts 2:20, 2 Peter 3:12). Likewise the "last day", upon which all mankind resurrects, is probably not a calendar day after which the earth stops spinning, but the final procedure before the new creation can commence (John 6:39-40).

Unlike our modern calendar, the Jewish one only had one week day with a name, namely the Sabbath, and the other days were numbered. Because the word for day really only means "uninterrupted period of activity", a section of a day is still a day. That may render a somewhat frustrating endeavor the puzzle of how long precisely folks were where (as some commentators appear keen to do), but here's a hint: Although Jesus was in the grave three days, he wasn't in there 72 hours. The only whole day he spent in the grave was the Sabbath; he went in on the day before and came out on the day after. That's three days (and the same goes for Jonah; Matthew 12:40).

Our noun ημερα (emera) is used 389 times in the New Testament, see full concordance, and comes with a small array of derivations and compounds:

The adjective ημερος (emeros) means civilized (of humans), tame (of animals), cultivated (of plants), and even benign (of tumors), and for obvious reasons occurs all over the classics. Our adjective also served as an epithet of Artemis, the protector of young things: η Ημερα (e Emera), the Civilized One, which comes close to one of Athena's epithets, namely Πολιας (Polias), meaning Of The City, from πολις (polis), city, and thus also meaning the Civilized One. Polias and to some extend Emera would be Greek feminine equivalents of the Latin male Urbanus.

Our adjective is curiously absent from the New Testament, but that's probably also because of the ubiquity of the verb δαμαζω (damazo), to domesticate or tame. The latter verb obviously relates to the Latin domo, to tame, from which English gets words like domesticate and domicile, which in turn brings to mind the Hebrew verb דמם (damam), to be still and words like דמות (demut), likeness, דם (dam), blood, and אדם ('adom), human (hence Adam). But the origin of our adjective ημερος (emeros) is unclear, or so the experts assert.

Speakers of Latin, and especially those who were more into wordplay than into technical etymologies, would surely have noted the obvious similarity between our adjective ημερος (emeros), civilized, and the Latin noun and adjective emiritus, the perfect passive participle of emereo, to earn, deserve or merit, which was used to refer to retired professors and soldiers and such. This word in turn comes from the familiar ex-, out, and mereo, to earn, deserve or merit, from the PIE root "(s)mer-", to allot or assign, from which also stems μερος (meros), share, part or portion. This word together with the adjective πολυς (polus), meaning much or many, forms the adverb πολυμερος (polumeros), meaning many-sidely, or by way of many "parts" (hence our English word polymer), or many memories or minds and/or many participations (Hebrews 1:1).

Speakers of Greek with a comparable preference for humorous wordplay rather than technicals, would surely have been reminded of the noun ημερα (emera), meaning day (see above). Take for instance the word ημεροσκοπος (emero-skopos), to guard or watch by day, which could also be interpreted as emeros-kopos, civilized beating.

The day was the period in which all work was performed — "We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work" (John 9:4). Moreover, in a poetic mind, lights and cities are comparable — "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden" (Matthew 5:14) — so that Abraham's vision of the countless stars in the night (Genesis 15:5) becomes a vision of a galaxy of interconnected cities (in Greek: Apollo's silver bow), so that within any city there is always day (Revelation 21:23) even though between the cities, darkness may prevail (Revelation 22:15) — until of course even the wildernesses between the cities are cleared of wild animals and bandits and the roads between the cities are as regulated and safe as the cities themselves.

Note that in Biblical jargon it's common to speak in a singular form when we mean a class with an untold many members: hence fields may be eaten by the locust, and cities may be sacked by the Amalekite, while we never just mean one locust or one Amalekite. Likewise, the story of Adam is the story of the man, i.e. humanity, not one single individual. The Body of Christ likewise consists of many anointed (1 John 2:20-27). And likewise, the New Jerusalem is not simply one discrete city but a class of community, of which there are vast myriads, who will one day find themselves quite suddenly part of one huge single brain, whose cities are the neurons, and which had always been connected to all the other cities in ways that none of them could have foreseen or comprehended.

As said above, our adjective ημερος (emeros), civilized, does not occur in the New Testament, but from it comes:

The adjective ηρεμος (eremos) means tranquil, quiet, smooth, grown still or come at rest (1 Timothy 2:2 only). This word is thought to derive from the Proto-Indo-European root "hrem-", to rest, which doesn't appear to be attested in other West-European languages. But, oddly, this word ηρεμος (eremos), quiet, could easily be constructed from the noun ημερος (emeros), civilized, via the process of metathesis, the reversal of two letters. Metathesis is not very common in Greek but it is in Hebrew and often deliberate and meaningful (the hitpael binyan comes to mind, but also entire roots sometimes relate via metathesis).

All this suggests that first came ηρεμος (eremos), quiet, from which was formed ημερος (emeros), civilized, from which was formed ημερα (emera), day. But that does not seem to follow a typically Greek line of though, or metaphorical causal chain, and it would also not work according to the rules of natural evolution of Greek words (say the experts). All this implies that these words may have been formed under a foreign influence, and that could have been any which one.

Here at Abarim Publications we suspect that much of the Greek language, these words included, came about from the Semitic influence of early Greece's Phoenician trading partners (see our article on the many Hebrew roots of Greek). In that case, a prime candidate for the source of all these words is ערם ('erom), naked, from the verb עור ('ur II), to be exposed or laid bare. Identical verb עור ('ur I), means to rouse oneself. Verb ערם ('aram) means to be heaped up and noun ערמה ('arema) means heap. The ultimate root of all these words is ערר ('arar), which describes an accumulation in one place that results in an emptiness or barrenness everywhere else — both cities and clouds (νεφελη, nephele) form from this principle, and indeed any sort of commercial or intellectual fortune. Noun עיר ('ir) is the Hebrew Bible's common word for city.

Also note that from the PIE root "teks-", to weave, come our English words textile and text (and technology). Hebrew is not an Indo-European language, of course, but similar associations exist in Hebrew. As we point out in our article on χιτων (chiton), a garment, God is not concerned with oxen (1 Corinthians 9:9), and he's surely even less concerned with cloaks and blankets or patterns woven into wool. Instead, every reference to clothing in the Bible, from the fig leaves donned by Adam and Eve to the seamless robe of Jesus, are about text. Moses' basket among the "reeds" of Egypt is about text. The head of John the Baptist on a πιναξ (pinax), tablet, is about text. Paul's favorite cloak that he left with Carpus at Troas, and asks Timothy to bring to him half-way around the known world in Rome, is about text. The coming of the Logos in human flesh is about text. In fact, the entire Bible from Paradise to the New Jerusalem, from Alpha to Omega, is about the formation of language and text and the covering of human nakedness (Exodus 20:26).