the Berasit Hebrew Dictionary

בקר

'beqer' refers to all things bovine or cattle related; including cows, bulls, and calves, as well as beef. 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 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 when the practice began or whether it depends more on the physiology of the cows themselves or of the farmers. Nevertheless, these early-rising farmers probably would have noticed the pre-dawn sky and an easily recognizable constellation known as Taurus. There is a certain ineffable feeling one gets when staring at the night sky while everyone else is asleep. This may be what is referred to by a somewhat enigmatic reference in the book of Job that explicitly refers to “the stars of Taurus”:

Job 38:7 - cheer together stars of Taurus, shout all sons of the Alehim

Many further instances use this “cow word” 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 spelled out in Job 38:12 - each cycle commands Taurus experience dawn in place

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