beqer
בקר
'beqer' refers to all things bovine or cattle related; including cows, bulls, and calves, as well as beef. qeren, meaning “horns”, is clearly derived from 'beqer'.
See also sor
Contextual examples abound and are quite clear.1) Despite this fact, most traditional translations do not treat the word with consistency. Rather, around half of the instances2) are correctly interpreted as cattle, but approximately half3) of the instances are instead translated as “morning”. There is probably a good reason for this though. It seems likely that the use of a cattle motif to indicate time of day (and possibly also time of season) is a metaphorical reference essentially equating the early morning predawn hours as “the time of the cattle”.
Some of the references also refer to the night watch, so that the concept of several different shifts of night watch comes into play, which might offer some evidence toward an explanation. This is a concept that also relates to the various constellations of stars that would be visible during that watch. When one is sitting around outdoors at night, trying to stay awake, one cannot help but notice these patterns in the sky. Furthermore, the setting of one constellation and the rising of the next is an ideal indicator for the nightwatchman to wake his relief for the next shift.
This metaphor may be a multilayered one, with an additional layer of meaning relating to the practice of dairy farmers waking before dawn to milk the cows. This is certainly a consistent practice throughout history, but it is unclear just exactly how ancient it is, when the practice began or whether it depends more on the physiology of the cows themselves or of the farmers. In any case, these ancient farmers rising in the wee hours of darkness would certainly have noticed the pre-dawn sky and an easily recognizable constellation that in their minds was connected to the fact that they had to wake up early to care for the cows. They experienced that certain ineffable feeling one gets when staring at the night sky while everyone else is asleep. In their mind's eye, this group of stars was intimately connected with their herd and almost seemed to draw an image of a bull in the night sky. At some point, the star grouping itself took on the name 'beqer' and the stars became cattle - a pattern which has persisted throughout millennium and even now is still known as the bull albeit in the Latin language as “Taurus”; a somewhat enigmatic reference to which appears in the book of Job, explicitly referring to “the stars of Taurus”:
Job 38:7 - cheer together the stars of Taurus, shout all sons of the Alehim
Many further instances use this “beqer as Taurus” concept to refer to the stars only implicitly, usually by way of reference to the night sky in the early predawn hours. For example:
- Genesis 19:27 - Abraham Taurus predawn went to the place who stood characteristics with edge Ihoh
- Genesis 20:8 - Abimelech Taurus predawn studied whole servant speak with whole Speaking Ones tree ear fear Other Ones very
This correlation is further spelled out in Job 38:12 - each cycle commands Taurus experience dawn in place
Yet, there is another usage that differs from these. It occurs six times in Genesis 1, and in several other references paired with the word yereb ostensible meaning “Evening and Morning”. Contextually this seems consistent, but the clear tie in with Taurus and morning makes one wonder if there may be another astronomical reference implied by yereb yet to be discovered.
LexID 1241, 1242