window Summary and Overview

properly only an opening in a house for the admission of light and air, covered with lattice-work, which might be opened or closed (2 Kings 1:2; Acts 20:9). The spies in Jericho and Paul at Damascus were let down from the windows of houses abutting on the town wall (Josh. 2:15; 2 Cor. 11:33). The clouds are metaphorically called the "windows of heaven" (Gen. 7:11; Mal. 3:10). The word thus rendered in Isa. 54:12 ought rather to be rendered "battlements" (LXX., "bulwarks;" R.V., "pinnacles"), or as Gesenius renders it, "notched battlements, i.e., suns or rays of the sun"= having a radiated appearance like the sun.

The window of an Oriental house consists generally of an aperture closed in with lattice-work. #Jud 5:28; Pr 7:6| Authorized Version "casement;" #Ec 12:3| Authorized Version "window;" #So 2:9; Ho 13:3| Authorized Version "chimney." Glass has been introduced into Egypt in modern times as a protection against the cold of winter, but lattice-work is still the usual, and with the poor the only, contrivance for closing the window. The windows generally look into the inner court of the house, but in every house one or more look into the street. In Egypt these outer windows generally project over the doorway. [HOUSE]

WIN'DOW , In Eastern houses the windows are single apertures in the wall, opening upon the court within, not upon the street without, which gives a melancholy aspect to the streets. There is, however, sometimes a projecting balcony or porch in front of the house, carefully closed by lattice-work, and opened only at the occasion of some festival. From such a place Jezebel is supposed to have been looking out when she was seized and put to death by Jehu. 2 Kgs 9:30. And this was probably called the "casement." Prov 7:6; see also Song 2:9. Glazed windows were entirely unknown among the Hebrews, and are scarcely ever seen in the East at the present day. Before the Christian era, and, indeed, for several centuries after, glass was too costly to come into general use.

(See HOUSE.) Chalon, "aperture" with lattice work; this being opened, nothing prevented one from falling through the aperture to the ground (2 Kings 1:2; Acts 20:9). Houses abutting on a town wall often had projecting windows looking into the country. From them the spies at Jericho were let down, and Paul at Damascus (Joshua 2:15; )