'Black' in the Bible
Jacob responded, "You don't have to give me anything. Just do this for me: Let me tend your flock again and watch over it. Let me walk among your flocks today and remove every speckled or spotted sheep, along with every black lamb, and let me do the same with the speckled and spotted goats. These will be my wages.
In the future when you come to check on my wages, my honesty will testify for me. If I have any female goats that are not speckled or spotted, or any lambs that are not black, they will be considered stolen.”
That very day, Laban removed the male goats that were striped or spotted, all the female goats that were speckled or spotted that is, every one that had white on them and all the black lambs and placed them into the care of his sons.
Jacob kept the lambs separate, facing the striped and entirely black ones that belonged to Laban's flock. He set his own herd by itself and would not let them be with Laban's flock.
They covered the surface of the whole land so that the land was black, and they consumed all the plants on the ground and all the fruit on the trees that the hail had left. Nothing green was left on the trees or the plants in the field throughout the land of Egypt.
“You are to detest these birds. They must not be eaten because they are detestable:the eagle, the bearded vulture,the black vulture,
and the red kite and the black kite according to its kind,
And if the priest look on the plague of the scall, and, behold, it be not in sight deeper than the skin, and that there is no black hair in it; then the priest shall shut up him that hath the plague of the scall seven days:
But if the scall be in his sight at a stay, and that there is black hair grown up therein; the scall is healed, he is clean: and the priest shall pronounce him clean.
You came near and stood at the base of the mountain, a mountain blazing with fire into the heavens and enveloped in a dense, black cloud.
but these are the ones you may not eat:the eagle, the bearded vulture,the black vulture,
and the falcon, and the kite, and the black kite after its kind;
And it came to pass in the mean while, that the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode, and went to Jezreel.
When Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard [of it], so she painted her eyes with black eye paint and adorned her head and looked through the window.
Where were white, green, and blue, hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble: the beds were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue, and white, and black, marble.
“Let darkness and black gloom claim it;Let a cloud settle on it;Let the blackness of the day terrify it.
That are black because of ice, By them doth snow hide itself.
Before I go to the place from which I will not come back, to the land where all is dark and black,
“He uncovers mysteries [that are difficult to grasp and understand] out of the darknessAnd brings black gloom and the shadow of death into light.
You've asked, "What does God know? Can he sort through pitch black darkness?'
For I am overcome by the dark, and by the black night which is covering my face.
"[It is] a path a bird of prey does not know and [the] black kite's eye has not seen.
Black corals and crystal will not be mentioned, and wisdom's price [is] more than red corals.
My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat.
He sent black night and made it dark; and they did not go against his word.
Those who were in the dark, in the black night, in chains of sorrow and iron;
He took them out of the dark and the black night, and all their chains were broken.
For I have become like a wine-skin black with smoke; but I still keep the memory of your rules.
In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night:
I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother's children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.
(The Bridegroom)“How fair and beautiful you are, my darling,How very beautiful!Your eyes behind your veil are like those of a dove;Your hair is like [the shimmering black fleece of] a flock of [Arabian] goatsThat have descended from Mount Gilead [beyond the Jordan].
His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven.
And he will be looking down on the earth, and there will be trouble and dark clouds, black night where there is no seeing.
When he has leveled its surface,does he not then scatter black cumin and sow cumin?He plants wheat in rows and barley in plots,with spelt as their border.
Certainly black cumin is not threshedwith a threshing board,and a cart wheel is not rolled over the cumin.But black cumin is beaten out with a stick,and cumin with a rod.
I dress the heavens in blackand make sackcloth their clothing.
“Poor Jerusalem, storm-tossed, and not comforted,I will set your stones in black mortar,and lay your foundations in sapphires.
“Now what are you doing by going to Egypt [in search of an ally],To drink the [muddy] waters of the Nile?Or what are you doing by going to Assyria [in search of an ally],To drink the [muddy] waters of the Euphrates?
For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black: because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent, neither will I turn back from it.
For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on me.
Give glory to the Lord your God, before he makes it dark, and before your feet are slipping on the dark mountains, and, while you are looking for a light, he makes it into deep dark, into black night.
Judah mourneth, and the gates thereof languish; they are black unto the ground; and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up.
Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.
Javan (Greece), Tubal and Meshech (Asia Minor) traded with you; with the lives of men [taken as slaves] and vessels of bronze they paid for your merchandise.
Edom [was] trading [with] you because of the abundance of your products, [trading] with malachite, purple wool yarn and colorful weaving, and fine white fabric and black corals and rubies; [all these] they exchange for your merchandise.
Thus said the Lord Jehovah: In the day of his going down to sheol I have caused mourning, I have covered for him the deep, and diminish its flowings, And restrained are many waters, And I make Lebanon black for him, And all trees of the field have been covered for him.
And in quenching thee I have covered the heavens, And have made black their stars, The sun with a cloud I do cover, And the moon causeth not its light to shine.
All luminaries of light in the heavens, I make black over thee, And I have given darkness over thy land, An affirmation of the Lord Jehovah,
As the keeper goes looking for his flock when he is among his wandering sheep, so I will go looking for my sheep, and will get them safely out of all the places where they have been sent wandering in the day of clouds and black night.
For a day of dark and deep shade is near, a day of cloud and black night: like a black cloud a great and strong people is covering the mountains; there has never been any like them and will not be after them again, from generation to generation.
At their face trembled hath the earth, Shaken have the heavens, Sun and moon have been black, And stars have gathered up their shining.
Sun and moon have been black, And stars have gathered up their shining.
Go for help to him who makes Orion and the Pleiades, by whom the deep dark is turned into morning, who makes the day black with night; whose voice goes out to the waters of the sea, sending them out over the face of the earth: the Lord is his name;
Will not the Day of the LORD be darkness, and not light pitch black at that, without a ray of sunshine?"
Therefore, it will be night for you—without visions;it will grow dark for you—without divination.The sun will set on these prophets,and the daylight will turn black over them.
I saw in the night a man on a red horse, between the mountains in the valley, and at his back were horses, red, black, white, and of mixed colours.
In the first chariot were red horses; and in the second chariot black horses;
The black horses which are therein go forth into the north country; and the white go forth after them; and the grisled go forth toward the south country.
Ye have said, 'A vain thing to serve God! And what gain when we kept His charge? And when we have gone in black, Because of Jehovah of Hosts?
Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.
So the Lord replied, "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this black mulberry tree, 'Be pulled out by the roots and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.
Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets [who spoke a new message of God to the people] and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who had been brought up with Herod [Antipas] the tetrarch, and Saul.
You have not come to a mountain which may be touched, and is burning with fire, and to a black cloud, and a dark smoke, and a violent wind,
These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been reserved.
wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.
And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
So I looked, and behold, an ashen (pale greenish gray) horse [like a corpse, representing death and pestilence]; and its rider’s name was Death; and Hades (the realm of the dead) was following with him. They were given authority and power over a fourth part of the earth, to kill with the sword and with famine and with plague (pestilence, disease) and by the wild beasts of the earth.