כֶּ֫סֶא

# Késeh (כסא): The Full Moon in Hebrew Scripture The Hebrew word *késeh* designates specifically the full moon phase, appearing only twice in the biblical text. Its rarity in Scripture suggests it represents a specialized rather than common term in ancient Hebrew vocabulary. The word's limited occurrence indicates that biblical writers had other, more frequently used terms for discussing lunar phenomena, reserving *késeh* for contexts where the full moon's particular astronomical condition held particular significance. The scarcity of this term—appearing merely twice across the entire Hebrew Bible—indicates that references to the full moon were not central to biblical discourse, despite the moon's obvious importance to ancient Israelite religious and agricultural calendars. *Késeh* appears to have been a technical or descriptive term employed when writers specifically needed to indicate the moon at its brightest, most visually complete phase, rather than a general designation for the moon itself. Without access to the specific biblical passages in which *késeh* appears, the full contextual significance of this word cannot be determined from the lexical data alone. However, its precise denotation of the full moon phase—distinct from other lunar terminology—suggests that ancient Hebrew speakers maintained a vocabulary precise enough to distinguish different observable stages of the moon's cycle when such precision served their communicative purposes.