It felt like it rained for forty days and forty nights.
forty days and forty nights
idiomA long, unbroken period of trial, hardship, or waiting.
Origin
The phrase recurs across the Bible as a marker of prolonged ordeal. In Genesis 7:12 the rain of the Flood falls for forty days and forty nights; in Matthew 4:2 Jesus fasts in the wilderness for the same span before being tempted.
Forty is a round number of testing throughout scripture — Israel wanders forty years, Moses waits forty days on the mountain — and the doubled day-and-night formula stresses that the trial never lets up, running straight through without pause.
In English forty days and forty nights carries that weight of a long, relentless stretch of difficulty or endurance, whether or not the count is meant literally.
After the funding fell through, the founders spent what felt like forty days and forty nights fighting to keep the company alive.
The siege dragged on for what the survivors would later describe as forty days and forty nights, an unbroken ordeal of cold, hunger, and dwindling hope that seemed as if it would never end.
Genesis after Eden: Noah and the flood, Babel, Sodom, and the patriarchs.
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two by two (idiom)
In pairs, one alongside another.
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Tower of Babel (idiom)
A grand, over-ambitious project that collapses into confusion and a breakdown in communication.
- 03
Sodom and Gomorrah (idiom)
A place or scene of extreme wickedness, vice, and moral ruin.
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a pillar of salt (idiom)
The fate of someone who cannot stop looking back at the past instead of moving forward.
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Jacob's ladder (idiom)
A link between the earthly and the heavenly, or by extension a long, steep climb.
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a coat of many colors (idiom)
A conspicuous mark of favouritism that stirs up envy in others.