I visit them when the blackness of the night aids me;
And I retire when the whiteness of the morning drives me away.
A critic[[440]] remarks on this passage that the writer ought to have spoken of the day rather than of the whiteness of the morning, as the rhetorical law of al-muḳâbalâ ‘antithesis’ demands as the opposite to Night not Dawn, but Day. Thus ‘the whiteness of day’ would be better. Another passage with the antithesis is contained in Ḥarîrî: ‘The white day becomes black’ (iswadda-l-yaum al-abyaḍ).[[441]] This use of language is characteristically exemplified in the expression sirnâ bayâḍa jauminâ wa-sawâda leylatinâ, ‘we travelled night and day’ (literally, ‘we travelled during the whiteness of our day and the blackness of our night,’ Aġânî, II. 74. 20). But apart from any antithesis, the white colour is attributed to the light of the morning and the day: falamma-rtafaʿat al-shams fabyâḍḍat, ‘after the sun had risen high and become white,’ is said in a tradition.[[442]] In the Romance of ʿAntar (XXIV. 111. 3), a horse is thus described: ‘he was white in colour, as if he were the day when it breaks, or the moon[[443]] when it shines with full beams’ (wa-hua abyaḍ al-laun kaʾannahu al-ṣabâḥ iḏa-nfajar wa-l-ḳamar iḏâ badar).
On Assyrian ground also we discover the idea of the whiteness of the sun, expressed, not indeed by a word directly signifying a colour, but yet by an epithet which is undoubtedly founded upon this idea. In the lyrical poem, called by Schrader ‘The Assyrian Royal Psalm’ (line 29), a land with a silver sky,[[444]] i.e. with a bright shining sunny sky, is desired for the king. So here the bright sunny sky is represented as of silver colour. On the other hand, Ḥomarm, the name of a Himyarite god,[[445]] has perhaps a solar meaning, equivalent to the Arabic aḥmar ‘Red;’ at all events, the fancy that he may be a sort of Bacchus (chamr ‘wine’) sounds improbable. In Hebrew literature we find no direct indications of the colours which were associated with the sun: an indirect indication is afforded by the passage in Is. XXIV. 23, where it is said that ‘the sun grows pale and the moon red.’[[446]] In the Talmûd literature, however, we find an incidental discussion of the colour of the sun; to which one of the Excursus is devoted.[[447]]
I have paused long on the ideas held of the Sun with reference to colour, longer than is consistent with the symmetry of my book, and have especially brought up many examples from the Arabic language, celebrated for its wealth of synonyms and epithets—all with the object of giving probability to my ideas on the mythical character of Esau or Edom and Laban, Jacob’s two hostile kinsmen. We have seen that the sun is called white quite as frequently as red;[[448]] now is it not certain beyond a doubt that the two foes of Jacob the Night-sky, namely Edom the red and Laban the white, are only names for the Sun, formed by the Hebrew myth on the ground of the sun’s colour? The war of darkness and the stormy sky against the red or white sunny sky is described in the rich language of Mythology, which has devoted such multifarious appellations to this struggle, as a strife of one who follows on the heel of his brother, against the white and the red. Here we will return to a point which was anticipated in the Third Section of this chapter; I mean the fact that the mythic feature which, with other solar characteristics, has fastened itself on the description of David, a perfectly historical person, that he was admônî ‘reddish,’ belongs to the same group of mythic ideas. It is a bit of solar myth: ‘He is red, and of excellent sight and good eyes’ (1 Sam. XVI. 12).
Thus the mythical appellations Jacob, Edom, and Laban appear to be cleared up, and the features belonging to them have discovered to us the nocturnal character of the first-named and the solar of the two latter personages. I have confined myself to the most essential point, the statement of the fact and the identification of the mythic figures in the centre of the story. If we were to use the collateral points also as mythic matter, more abundant results might be attained. But we must limit ourselves to an investigation of the main features, since in the present position of mythological inquiry it would be difficult and dangerous to try to pick out with any confidence from the epic descriptions in the Bible all that belongs to the original myth. It might, for instance, be urged that Jacob is endowed with a deceitful character, since he cheats the one of his blessing and his birthright, and the other of his sheep (Hermes), and this might be treated as characteristic of the night, as the figures of the night-sky are credited elsewhere with a thievish nature. ‘Like thieves,’ said the ancient Indian singer, ‘so the nights stole away with their stars, that Sûrya might become visible’ (Rigveda, I. 50. 2).
In a legend of the Palatinate the King of the Night residing at the Ice-sea stole the Sun;[[449]] Rachel steals the household-gods of her father Laban (Gen. XXXI. 19); and Jacob himself, as the Scripture expresses it, steals the heart of Laban the Aramean, not telling him of his intention to fly (v. 20).
Now wrapt in mantle, like a thief, the Night is seen,
She covers o'er her silver-studded raiment’s sheen.
says Arany, in his ‘Gipsies of Nagy-Ida’[[450]] (Canto I. v. 21).