Kislev

Biblical Text

Kislev is the name of the ninth month of the Hebrew calendar. The name appears in two places in Scripture.

• Nehemiah 1:1: "In the month Chisleu, in the twentieth year" of King Artaxerxes, while Nehemiah is in Shushan the palace, he hears that the wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates burned with fire. He weeps, fasts, and prays. Later, in the month Nisan (Nehemiah 2:1), he asks the king for permission to rebuild Jerusalem.
• Zechariah 7:1: "In the fourth year of king Darius... the word of the LORD came unto Zechariah in the fourth day of the ninth month, even in Chisleu" (the spelling of the month varies slightly among translations). At this time the people of Bethel ask whether they should continue the fast they had kept in the fifth month.

Background

Old Testament texts from before the Babylonian exile generally refer to months by number, such as "the first month" or "the ninth month." After the exile, Babylonian month names such as Nisan, Kislev, and Tebeth came into use alongside the numbers. Scholars regard the name Kislev as one of those borrowed from the Babylonian calendar.

There were two ways of numbering the months. Counting from Nisan in the spring as the first month, Kislev is the ninth month; under the reckoning that begins the year with an autumn month, it is the third. Because it is a lunar month, its correspondence with solar-calendar dates shifts somewhat from year to year.

This period falls during the rainy season and winter in Palestine. That seasonal character also appears in texts that refer to "the ninth month" without naming it. Jeremiah 36:22 depicts the king sitting in the winter house before a fire, and Ezra 10:9 describes the people assembling and trembling in the great rain.

Broader Biblical Significance

Kislev is associated with the Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah). This feast commemorates Judas Maccabeus's recovery and rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after its defilement by the Seleucid dynasty. First Maccabees 4 records that the rededication took place on the twenty-fifth day of Kislev. Although Protestant Bibles do not include the books of Maccabees, the Gospel of John 10:22–23 relates that Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch at the feast of the dedication in winter. For this reason the month is often presented as a link between the history of the intertestamental period and the New Testament.

Interpretation and Issues

• Status of the books of Maccabees: The Catholic Church accepts the books of Maccabees as canonical (deuterocanonical). Protestants regard them as outside the canon. The Anglican tradition reads the Apocrypha for instruction but does not use it to establish doctrine. The books of Maccabees are included in the Korean Common Translation.
• Chronology of Nehemiah: Both the Kislev of Nehemiah 1:1 and the Nisan of 2:1 are dated to "the twentieth year." If Nisan is taken as the beginning of the year, the sequence does not fit. Some explain this by holding that the king's regnal years were counted from the autumn; others attribute it to a problem in the transmission of the text.
• Artaxerxes is usually identified as Artaxerxes I and Darius as Darius I, though precise conversions of the dates vary somewhat among scholars.

In the Korean Church

Korean Protestant churches do not observe the Feast of Dedication. Kislev is therefore mentioned chiefly in expository preaching on Nehemiah and Zechariah. Sermons on Nehemiah 1–2 sometimes emphasize the months of prayer and preparation between Nehemiah's hearing the news in Kislev and his standing before the king in Nisan.