black

properly the absence of all color

• In Prov. 7:9 the Hebrew word means, as in the margin of the Revised King James Version, “the pupil of the eye.” It is translated “apple” of the eye in Deuteronomy 32:10; Psalm 17:8; Prov. 7:2.

• It is a different word which is translated “black” in Lev. 13:31, 37; Song of Songs 1:5; 5:11; and Zech. 6:2, 6.

• Black stones—ebony, coal, coral, marble (pavement), onyx

  It is uncertain what the “black marble” of Esther 1:6 was which formed a part of the mosaic pavement.

• Black birds—raven, glede, vulture (black kite), stork

• Black hair (Leviticus 13:31; Song of Songs 5:11)

• Black complexion (Song of Songs 1:5)

  Ethiopia—black people

  Are black people the result of a curse on Ham? Answer

• Black horses (Zechariah 6:2, 6)

• The word rendered “brown” in Genesis 30:32 (Revised King James Version, “black”) means properly “scorched”, i.e., the color produced by the influence of the sun’s rays.

• Black curtains—the tabernacle ahd 12 curtains of black goats’ hair cloth

• Black clouded sky (1 Kings 18:45)

• Black night (Micah 3:6; Jeremiah 4:28)

• Blackend brook—rendered turbid by melting snow and ice (Job 6:16)

  Euphrates—the black river

  Nile—the black river

• Black for mourning—Mourner’s robes (Jeremiah 8:21; 14:2)

  Black was the emblem of mourning, affliction, calamity (Jeremiah 14:2; Lam. 4:8; 5:10).

  “Black” in Job 30:30 means dirty, blackened by sorrow and disease (“My skin is black upon me”).

• Evil—The word black is used as symbolical of evil in Zechariah 6:2, 6 and Rev. 6:5 (black horses, black sun).

More information

• darkness
• white
• color
• Accad—Babylonian inscriptions about “the black heads” and “the black faces”
• blacksmith
• blains—black leprosy
• blackend bottle
• Cedron—black torrent
• Chemarim
• Cush
• fitches—black cummin
• frontlets—black calfskin
• Gibeon—Rizpah watched over the blackening corpses
• Ham, son of Noah
• Kedar—black hair-tents and dark-skinned people
• Kedron
• Machaerus—the Black Fortress
• poplar and mulberry—black poplar
• Niger
• sackcloth—cloth made of black goats’ hair
• Shihor-Libnath
• Sihor
• Simeon Niger
• sycamine tree