Used symbolically for:
1. Death, a time “when no man can work” (John 9:4).
2. The moral darkness of the world, in which men sleep and are drunken (1 Thess. 5:7).
3. The period of Christ’s rejection, which is far spent, and the “day” at hand (Rom. 13:12). There will be no night of moral or spiritual darkness in the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev. 21:25; Rev. 22:5).