Evening, the Time for Meditation
G. Gilfilhan. Genesis 24:63 And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide: and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, the camels were coming. Morning is too fresh and hopeful; day, too bustling and summy; even night too sombre and uniform for the sweet serenities and gentle fluctuations of contemplation. It is an exercise especially suited to the evening, when day and night meeting form the "conflux of two eternities"; when thought tends (like the bat in the twilight air), not to fly onward or backward, but to trace circles, now narrowing and again enlarging; when an autumnal feeling pervades, in a less degree, the mind during all the seasons of the year; when the sun becomes more spiritual as he departs, and the stars and planets arise in the sky like thoughts and feelings in the mind — some cold and glittering as the former, and others warm and panting in their purple light, like the latter; when the exquisite sensation of "moonlight approaching" is conveyed, reminding you of the first dim dawning of love in the heart, or of some grand and new conception slowly lifting itself up in the horizon of the soul; when the tender shade over the landscape, the mild compromise between light and darkness, and the feeling of general repose, excite anew a luxurious emotion, half of sense and half of imagination, as different from the stern clearness of noonday thought as it is from the unearthly speculations and excursions of the lonely midnight mind — then is the time for meditation on all the themes dearest to man — on nature, poetry, the great characters and actions of the past, on the future life, on heaven, and on God. (G. Gilfilhan.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide: and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, the camels were coming. WEB: Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the evening. He lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, there were camels coming.