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    1. Biblical Genealogies Show Two Human Origins

    2. The Book of Genesis Assumes an Old Earth

    3. Was Adam the First Man According to Romans 5

    4. Creation Days Were Long Ages According to Genesis

    5. A Discovery in the Hebrew Language Reveals a Dual Human Origin

    6. Genesis 2 and 5 Do Not Contradict My Dual Origin Creation Thesis

    7. Outline of Genesis Reveals That God Used Two Methods of Creation

    8. Does 1 Corinthians 15 verse 45 Teach That Adam Was the First Man

    9. In 1 Corinthians 15 Verse 47 Who Is the First Man

    10. How Do You Harmonize the Bible and Science

    11. Can You Believe in Evolution and Be a Christian

12. The Descendants of Noah Who Were Scattered from Babel Were Able to Conquer Others


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I hope you will have a pleasant visit to my blog. Please choose an article from the right column or scroll down below; Almost every article requires that you click on "Read more" to continue. My blog shows that, according to the Bible, God created mankind at two different times in two different manners. This understanding makes it possible to harmonize science and the Bible.

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New Evidence for Two Human Origins

Are you interested in THE AGE OF THE EARTH, DARWINISM, THE HUMAN GENOME, BIBLICAL GENEALOGIES, HARMONIZING SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE? If so, here are some articles that might interest you. I have written a book on this subject entitled "New Evidence for Two Human Origins: Discoveries That Reconcile the Bible and Science." I hope you enjoy this blog which is meant to help us understand ourselves and God's Word. Please return to find new posts. Your comments and emails would be greatly appreciated.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Were The Creation Days Twenty-Four-Hour Days?

(Revised June 19, 2014)

The Following article is a portion of the tenth chapter of my book New Evidence for Two Human Origins: Discoveries That Reconcile the Bible and Science. [1] I have removed centain material here and there to shorten the article for the reader's convenience or to made changes. I also added a small amount that I placed in brackets.

...Science tells us that modern humans appeared about 100,000 to 200,000 years ago... science also believes that the earth was created about 4.6 billion years ago and that the universe was created about 13.7 billion years ago. If the creation days were only twenty-four hours in duration, modern humans could not have been created 100,000 years ago. Neither science nor the Bible teaches that man was created 13.7 billion years ago. Either the conclusion of those who interpret the biblical creation days to be twenty-four-hour days is wrong or the conclusion of science is wrong. Both cannot be correct. If we were to discover that the days of creation as presented in the Bible could be interpreted as very long days rather than twenty-four-hour solar days, mankind could have been created at the end of the long period of time during which God created the universe...[including] the earth. Many who [have] read the first chapter of Genesis say they must interpret these days as twenty-four-hour solar days, certainly not long ages. J. Ligin Duncan III and David W. Hall contributors to The Genesis Debate, argue, “we have yet to see internally compelling reasons for why yom [day] in Genesis 1 means an extended or undefined period.” [2] This explanation they require is exactly what I shall attempt to explain step by step. It will be so put forth, as they desire, based, not on a modern clever hypothesis but rather by approaching the text the way an early Hebrew reader would approach it....

The Seemingly Long Appearance of the Creation Days

The presentation of the creation days in the book of Genesis describes them in a way that causes them to appear to have been longer than twenty-four hours. The six days of creation include all of the creation of the universe, according to Genesis 2:1-3: “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts...Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” [3] If we couple this verse, which concludes the narration of the seven creation days, with the opening verse in Genesis 1:1, it seems conclusive that the entire universe was included in God’s creative activity which was performed in the six creation days. On day 3, God first raises the land above the ocean surface and the water runs off the earth. This gathering of the waters could have been done within a few hours by supernatural means, of course. Without such means, the flow of water from the land in a twelve-hour day would have been impossible. The erosion would be fantastic. Also on day 3 God decrees that the earth should bring forth vegetation that was reproducing itself after its kind. Since the Hebrew verb for “brought forth” is the natural word used to describe the process of normal growth, we find no cause to see this process as accelerated supernaturally, but rather the description is of natural growth at a normal rate. If this were the case, it would have required much longer than a part of a day to bring the normal vegetation to the point of seed bearing.

A Revealing Subtlety in Genesis

Now we shall observe a very interesting subtlety in the presentation of the creation account which shows us that, in order to make good sense of this Bible passage, the earth must have been created more than 6,000 or 7,000 years ago. Please observe carefully Genesis 2:5-6 which I shall quote below. From these two verses it can be shown that either the creation days were much longer than twenty-four hours or Adam and Eve were created considerably after the six creation days or both. In previous chapters, we saw that Adam and Eve were created considerably after the six days of creation; in this chapter, we shall show that Genesis 1 does not indicate the length of days of creation, because these six days of creation are not solar days. We have already shown in chapter 6 that in the following verses the Hebrew word translated “earth” in the NASB should have been rendered “land,” since it is referring to the local area of Mesopotamia. I shall quote Genesis 2:5 inserting “land,” since “land” makes a better translation. And I shall rewrite Genesis 2:6 as I translated it myself in chapter 6:

Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth [land], and no plant of the field had yet sprouted; for the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth [land]; and there was no man to cultivate the ground. (Gen. 2:5, NASB) But a flow went up from the land over and over again and kept watering the whole surface of the ground. (Gen. 2:6, my translation.)
Verses 5-6 are an explanation of why no wild plants and domestic herbs had grown up: it was watered by periodic flooding. This pictures a considerably long period of time when no shrubs and plants grew. This text speaks of a time when it did not rain upon the earth and no vegetation grew. This was a long enough time to make it worth mentioning. Does this mean that on the third day of creation, before the vegetation sprang up on day 3, the earth had dried up? Certainly the ground was not in need of rain the day it was elevated above the oceans on day 3! I shall give a little discussion of Genesis 2; it may throw some light upon the matter.

These verses are leading up to the creation of Adam and Eve. Let us suppose that the days of creation were twenty-four hours in length and that the passage is speaking of the entire earth; this verse would be telling us why the vegetation had not come up. That the author should include such an explanation would be inappropriate for a number of reasons. (1) The earth had been covered with water on day 3 and man was created on day 6. To give a reason that the vegetation had not come up in three twenty-four-hour days would have been out of place. (2) If the earth had been covered with water on day 3, how could it be completely dry from the lack of rain on day 6 only three twenty-four-hour days later?

The whole assumption in the first place that the passage is speaking universally is incompatible with the facts. The earth sprouted vegetation on day 3, so how could it say in Genesis 2:5, “Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth” if the vegetation came forth on day 3? [I believe that Genesis 2:5-6 is referring to a local area of the earth.  In the and 2007 and 2009 editions of my book New Evidence for Two Human Origins: Discoveries That Reconcile the Bible and Science,1 I followed the view of those who place the Garden of Eden in the lower part of Mesopotamia (present day Iraq). I took the view defended by some people that the Garden of Eden was located at Eridu which was situated near the mouth of the Euphrades River. Since I wrote my book, I have recently read David M. Rohl's book Legend: The Genesis Of Civilisation2. Also I have observed more thoroughly the Bible's description of the river that went through Eden and became four heads.

 The Bible says, "And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it was divided and became four heads" (Gen. 1:10).3 This verse indicates that the Garden of Eden was located near the heads of these two known rivers, not at their mouths where they go into the Persian Gulf. Having discovered Rohl's arguments, I have changed my mind as to the location of the Garden of Eden. I do not agree with all of Rohl's statements and conclusions, of course, since he does not believe in the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures as I do. Rohl has convinced me that Eden was in northern Iran between Lake Urmia and the Caspian Sea. The Garden of Eden was just east of Lake Urmia. The Bible says that before God created Adam a flow came out of the ground to water the whole land. (Gen. 2:6) It had not rained on the land. Many translations call this flow a "mist," but this is an incorrect translation. See my book for why we can be sure that "mist" is an improper translation. The New American Standard Bible gives "flow" as an alternate rendering. (Gen. 2:5) Genesis 2:10 tells us that "a river went out of Eden to water the garden." So the river must have been fed by this "flow" that came out of the ground "to water the garden." The fact is that this mountainous area east and southeast of Lake Urmia contains "hot" springs that flow out water from the earth. An example is the Takht-e Suleiman, which is still flowing today. Two streams flow down from it and combine to form the Zarrineh Rud, which flows down to Lake Urmia. These are also called abzu's since they were thought by people in ancient times to be outcroppings from the underground water called the Abyss. Please see my article called "Where was the Garden of Eden?"]

Now that we understand that Genesis 2:5-6 is referring to a relatively small area, does it invalidate our conclusion that we must see a lengthy time between day 3 of creation and the setting for the creation of Adam and Eve described in Genesis 2:5? No. Essentially the entire earth was covered with water at the beginning of day 3; therefore, the setting of Genesis 2:5 must have been much later. The author was giving an explanation as to why no plants had yet come up. A conclusion that only three twenty-four-hour days separated day 3 from day 6 would still certainly be a mistake. To suppose that the earth had dried up in three days would be unreasonable. Therefore, we can confidently conclude that these creation days were much longer than twenty-four-hours, according to the Genesis text itself, or that Adam and Eve were created much later than the seventh day of creation or both.

The Key to Understanding the Days of Creation

Let us put before us the majestic words of the opening of the Bible, Genesis 1:1-5:

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
5 [a] And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. [b] And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
...Verse 4 means that God created the light so that it was separated from the darkness; verse 5 reveals that this separation was what we know to be the day-night cycle. The text says, “God called the light day, and the darkness He called night.” Next we read what is similarly recorded after all six creation days: “And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” The key to understanding the days of creation is the formula: “And there was evening and there was morning, one day.”

Some Erroneous Interpretations

Our first task is to dispel some erroneous interpretations of this formula; they would greatly deflect us from arriving at a true understanding of this creation account. At this time, I would like to analyze the text to determine the meaning of the formula “and there was evening the there was morning, one day.” The King James Version translates verse 5b this way: “And the evening and the morning were the first day.” This is a poor translation of the Hebrew and has added to the confusion. This is not a synecdoche of the part; such an interpretation would put “evening” to mean “night” and “morning” to mean “day.” If “evening” meant the night after the first creation day and “morning” meant the day after this night, the text would need to say “day two” rather than “one day” as it does because this interpretation would take us through a second day of creation. Therefore, “evening” and “morning” cannot be figures of speech. This formula, as others similar to it, functions, as a terminus of a day of creation. A broad look at these formulas and their placement confirms this conclusion. Each is at the end of the creation day which is being described, and each ends with the number corresponding to that day.

Another mistake some interpreters make is to say that “evening” and “morning” are to be taken figuratively to mean the end or beginning of an age. This is impossible due to the first occurrence of this formula in Genesis 1:5, in which God gives the names “day” and “night” to the light and the darkness. Here the very next statement is, “And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” The close proximity of this formula to the words “day” and “night” and the flow of the narrative directly into “evening” and “morning” after the creation of day and night demands that “evening” and “morning” be taken literally in this verse. Since this is a formula used for all six days, it certainly must hold its same original interpretation where it is used throughout the next five days as it had for day 1. Therefore, we can be assured that “evening” and “morning” are always used in a literal sense in Genesis 1.

The Author’s Choice of Numerals

If the reader is to gain a true understanding of the text, he must take into account the author’s choice of numerals with which he numbered the days of creation. We shall next make a very important observation which concerns a detail in the use of numerals that the author purposely employed here to communicate his intention to the reader. It has often been pointed out that the first day of creation is terminated with a cardinal numeral (that is, “one”); whereas, the other five days of creation are closed with the ordinal numeral which has the form, that is, “second,” “third,” “fourth,” etc. Why didn’t the author end day 1 with a similar expression, such as, “a first day” or “the first day”? It is evident that after the author numbered the first day of creation, he made a definite departure in the type of numerals that he used to number the days of creation.

Another way he could have numbered the first day would have been to use a cardinal numeral with the word “day” to make the text read “day one,” but this was not what was written either. [The Hebrew reads literally "day one": to translate the Hebrew meaning into English the order must be changed so that he translation reads "one day."] Why didn’t the author use one of these two expressions rather than “one day”? “One day” carries more meaning in this context than the phrase “day one” would have carried or than “the first day” would have carried. The phrase “one day” does more than terminate the first day of creation at this point in the narrative—it names and defines the first creation day. It expresses the idea to the reader that we are defining as one creation day the period of time which began at the very beginning of the creative acts of God, when the earth was brought into existence and was laying in darkness, and it includes the time which passed until the time when the darkness was dispelled and the light appeared in the day-night cycle. If the author had used the words “day one” or the words “the first day,” he would have only been counting off this day as the first day. He would have been consistent with the way he numbered the other five days; however, he would not have used a phrase that acted to define or set apart as one creation day all that had transpired to this point in time.

To repeat myself a little, the meaning of one day is incongruous with the meaning of day one. The phrase “day one” would have told us that at this time in the past the first day of creation ended; whereas, the phrase that the author used, “one day,” communicates to us that the author is defining all that transpired before this time as one creation day.

Please refer to table 8, where you will find listed the expected and the actual numerals used to label the days of creation. The purpose of table 8 is to consolidate for our convenience the way the text numbers the days so that we can compare the phrases and so we can compare the wording that we would have expected to see if “days” meant twelve-hour or twenty-four-hour solar days with the actual wording of the text. The column entitled “Expected Numerals” shows how we would have expected to see the days numbered. We would have expected to see them all ordinals, that is, “first,” “second,” “third,” etc. The second column shows that the first day uses the cardinal form of numeral, that is, “one.” We would not have been surprised if the first day had employed the phrase, “day one,” which fits the idea communicated by the phrase, “the first day.” The best explanation for why the author used the expression that he did to number the first day is that he wanted to define the period of time from the beginning of creation to the end of the first day.

TABLE 7: EXPECTED AND ACTUAL SETS OF NUMERALS USED TO LABEL THE CREATION DAYS

These numeric phrases terminate the formulas which number the days of creation. The formula begins: “And there was evening and there was morning…”

Day         Expected Numerals                              Actual Terminology of Text

1            “the first day” or “day one”                    “one day”

2            “a second day”                                      “a second day”

3            “a third day”                                          “a third day”

4            “a fourth day”                                        “a fourth day”

5            “a fifth day”                                           “a fifth day”

6            “a sixth day”                                          “the sixth day”

7            “the seventh day”                                   (no formula)

An Unlikelihood

The day we know as daylight had already been defined before the evening-morning formula was written. In Genesis 1:3-5a, the author had already discussed the solar day. The word “day” had already been defined in these verses as the light portion of the day-night cycle. The text even proceeded to give the names God ascribed to day and night. Naming is always left until last, as it was in the case of God’s naming the expanse in the Genesis account of day 2. The separation of the waters to form the expanse (sky) is explained in verses 6 and 7, and then verse 8 says,

And God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
Since the twelve-hour solar day that is contrasted with night in the narration of the first day, had already been defined before the closing formula, the word “day” that is part of the closing formula must mean a different day from the solar day. Since the solar day [had]...already been defined, it would have been very unlikely that the author would have defined it once again in his formula. He would have simply written, “day one,” or, “the first day.” God must have been employing the formula to define a period of time which constituted the first creation day, not the first solar day. Now we need to determine what is included in it.

An Illogical Interpretation

At this point it is necessary for me to show that a narrow angle interpretation of verse 5 would be illogical to a Hebrew reader of Moses time. Rather, He would have to view this formula “and there was evening and there was morning, one day” in a broader manner, one in which we would understand this to be a break between two twelve-hour periods of daylight rather than a break at the end of the night. “And there was evening and there was morning” points to a division between adjacent twelve-hour periods of daylight. This broad angle view is illustrated in chart 27 (p. 241). We shall return to a discussion of the broad angle view shortly, but we shall next see that a narrow angle view would be illogical to the Hebrew reader.

A Contradiction

The narrow angle view would contradict the definition of “day” just given in the text. If we look at this text as though it is defining a twenty-four-hour day, we would be accumulating all that is described in verses 2-5; day one then terminates where the text says, “one day.” This narrow angle view would then include the darkness, the twelve-hour daytime hours and the night following. This narrow angle view would contradict the definition of a “day” as given in Genesis 1:4a, which only included daylight. Remember the text states, “And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night” (Gen. 1:5a). Therefore, this makes the narrow angle view doubtful.

But someone will say, “It is no problem to equate these two occurrences of the word ‘day’ because we include night in our meaning of the word day all the time.” This is precisely one reason why an English-speaking reader is apt to misunderstand what the text is saying. The Hebrew speaker did not usually use yom as an English speaker uses the word day to include night as well as the daylight hours. He generally used the word yom to mean only the daylight hours. You can prove this assertion to yourself by simply obtaining access to an analytical concordance, Young’s or Strong’s, for example, and reading down the column under the word day that translates from the Hebrew word yom. The entries in Young’s, 1970 edition, go from page 227 to 230, so it is possible to get a good feeling for the way the word is used. You would get better examples by looking up the word night which translates from the Hebrew words layelah or layil and look for references which speak of “day and night.” Here are some examples from Young’s: [4]

1. Genesis 7:4, 12: “upon the earth forty days and forty n. [nights]”
2. Exodus: 10:18: “the land all that day, and all (that) night”
3. I Kings 19:8: “forty days and forty nights unto Horeb”
An example from Esther is especially noteworthy because Esther gave instructions to her people to fast for three days; in so doing she used the word “day” to mean a twelve-hour day because this is when they ate their meals. Because she desired to make sure the people understood they were to fast during nighttime, she also found it necessary to add the words, “night or day.” By adding “night” and “day,” Esther was sure her people knew that she meant a continuous three-day fast:

Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast in like manner; and so shall I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish. (Est. 4:16; emphasis mine)
The expression “forty days and forty nights,” so often used in the Scriptures, was probably stated solely to express a continuous duration of time. Hebrew speakers used day to mean the day light hours and night to mean the dark hours just like the words were defined in Genesis 1:5a: “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.” Next we read verse 4b: “And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” For a Hebrew writer of Moses’ day to move the narrative along to the next morning and to call the whole of light period and dark period by the word yom would have been unlikely. At this point in our discussion, it appears that this formula terminates this creation day between two periods of time. This view I am calling the wide angle view.

The Hebrew Twenty-Four-Hour Day Ended in the Evening

Another reason for our excluding the narrow angle view is because the Hebrews’ twenty-four-hour cycle of night and day did not end in the morning but rather ended in the evening. Therefore, for a Hebrew to mean by the formula “and there was evening and there was morning, one day” a twenty-four-hour period ending in the morning is unlikely. If a Hebrew reader were to have read that a twenty-four-hour day was terminated in the morning, he would have been confused.

The Indestructible Day

The day is the basic indestructible unit of time. The clause “and there was evening and there was morning” obviously served to terminate a creation day. If it does not terminate the creation day in the morning, how does it serve to terminate the creation day? It must be realized that at this time in our narrative only one unit of time had been created—the solar day. The moon cycles and the years are not mentioned until day 4. What is more, the unit of time which was mentioned was the basic unit of time in Moses’ day; for that matter, it is the basic unit of time today. Weeks are...made of whole solar days. Months are...made of whole solar days, seldem, if ever... a portion of a day. Years, likewise, are...made up of whole solar days. It follows that centuries or any time units composed of years are made up of whole solar days. Units of time which are smaller than a day are...an exact division of a twenty-four-hour day. Exactly 60 seconds make a minute; exactly 60 minutes make an hour and exactly twenty-four hours make a day. A true solar year is very near 365-1/4 twenty-four-hour days in length...; our calendars contain 365 days for each of three consecutive years and then they contain 366 days on leap year to help make up for the four quarters-of-a-day lost in the four-year cycle. (A further infrequent calendar adjustment keeps the calendar in line with the solar rotations.) The Old Testament law also always terminated the week, the month (no matter how many days were included), the year, Sabbath days, or feasts days at the end of a twelve-hour solar day, not during a twelve-hour solar day. My point is that a day is like a block of granite; it is hard to break apart.

The breaks between the twelve-hour periods of daylight provide points at which the longer creation days can be divided in an orderly fashion. Taking a broad angle view of the larger creation days, we see that the formula “and there was evening and there was morning, one day” serves to provide a breaking point at which the creation days are stated to have been neatly severed. The formula also moves the narrative along from one creation day to the next. It sets the progress of the narrative to a point between two indestructible blocks of time, two twelve-hour daylight periods. The author pictures the break between the twelve-hour days by starting, “And there was evening and there was morning.” As we picture in our minds the passage of time from an evening to the next morning, we provide for ourselves a logical point in time to divide one period of time from the next. This formula provides a logical time to separate day 1 from day 2, day 2 from day 3 and so on.

In the Evening-Morning Formula the Twelve-Hour Day Is Assumed

In speaking of evening and morning, the text assumes the prior understanding of the definitions already given in verse 5a. The definition of “day” in verse 5a prepares the reader’s mind to make sense of the statement “and there was evening and there was morning, one day.” Since this formula provides a break between two adjacent twelve-hour solar days, it becomes a requirement that the two adjacent twelve-hour days would have been previously defined as such. If the twelve-hour solar day had not been defined fully before the formula was given, the wide angle focus would revert back to the narrow angle focus and the evening-morning formulas would have been made senseless to Moses’ contemporaries. This is because you would be forced to conclude that the day of verse 5b is being defined as ending in the morning. But the Jewish twenty-four-hour day ended in the evening.

Too Imprecise

We observed that the formula ending with the words “one day” defines a period of time. Now suppose it was defining a twelve-hour solar day; it would be too inaccurate because it extends this twelve-hour day over until morning. Now suppose the author was defining a twenty-four-hour day. This is unlikely also because it extends a twenty-four-hour day over until morning, but a Hebrew twenty-four-hour day ends in the evening. He would have been making an incorrect statement. Therefore, we must go to a broad angle view of the meaning of this formula in which we see it as defining long periods of time. Viewing these days as long periods of time means that the marker which separates adjacent days is viewed as a complete night. This broad angle interpretation is the only interpretation that would make sense to the contemporary Hebrew reader.

A Different Basis of Definition

The formula sets forth a definition of the creation day based upon the termination of a period of time rather than upon the concepts of light and darkness. The definition of the twelve-hour “day” in verse 5a is the presence of light in contrast to darkness; whereas God’s delineation of the first creation day is specified by a certain period of time using the words “and there was evening and there was morning, one day.” The break between the “evening” and “morning” terminated the time from the beginning of creation to the end of the first creation day. The solar day is based upon the solar alternations which produce light and darkness; the creation day is based upon the passing of a period of time.

It may be that the simplified creation account in Genesis 1 is saying that the first creation day only included a period of time followed by one solar day because it was the creation of the solar day that was God’s goal for His first creation day. Later creation days could have each included any number of solar days because the text’s definition of a creation day was completely independent of the solar day.

The Contemporary Hebrew

The Hebrew reader of Moses’ day would correctly interpret the evening-morning formula. Let us apply this knowledge to the first five verses of Genesis. The earth is in darkness so God decrees that there be light. God calls the light “day” and the darkness “night.” Evening and morning pass, bringing us to the point of the termination of this creation day. The narrator writes, “one day,” and in this manner, he defines the first day of creation as the time from the beginning of creation to this point in time. Of course, this would be a different “day” from the twelve-hour solar “day” defined as light. Since the narrative just took us through the night, from evening to morning, it would be easy for the reader who was an early Hebrew to discern that the author would not be defining the twelve-hour solar day as “one day,” but rather that he was defining God’s creation day by his use of the evening-morning formula.

If the author were concluding a twelve-hour period of light followed by darkness, he would have no doubt written, “and there was evening, one day.” And then, if he desired, he would have written, “And there was morning. And God said...” However, he carried the flow of time through the night to morning and called this time from the beginning of creation “one day.” Therefore, from this discussion of the word day and the true purpose of the formula “and there was evening and there was morning, one day,” we can conclude that the “day” of verse 5b is not the solar day of verse 5a and that a narrow angle focus would be unacceptable to the Hebrew for whom Genesis was written. Rather, it must be defined from the broader angle view portrayed in chart 27 (p. 241).

The Remaining Occurrences of the Evening and Morning Formula

The defining purpose of the formula would naturally carry throughout its other occurrences. It is true that the formulas employed after the second day and those following do not employ cardinal numbers as was done in the narrative of the first day. These formulas, however, also serve to terminate and thereby delineate the days they follow. Because precedence was set on the first day with the day-night formula, the reader is able to carry on this large angle interpretation and understand that each of the remaining formulas follows in step; it carries on the meaning of its first appearance.

Proper Assumptions

As we have observed, the day is...the building block for all larger units of time. Therefore, just because the text indicates that His creation day ends between two twelve-hour solar days, we are not at liberty to conclude that it must signify the termination of consecutive solar days. In the Hebrew narrative, it is assumed that a number of days or even years could have passed between one episode and the next narrated episode, unless the author states that the current action happened on the same day. Here are some examples:

For after seven more days, I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights....
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the flood gates of the sky were opened. And the rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights.

Another example is when Jehovah God spoke to Abraham and told him that Sarah his wife would bear a son to him and that Abraham should call his name Isaac. God told him that God would bless Ishmael, Abraham’s present son. God told Abraham to circumcise his household. After God was finished talking with Abraham, the Bible says, “And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all the servants who were born in his house...and circumcised the flesh of the foreskin in the very same day, as God had said unto him” (Gen. 17:23; emphasis mine).
On the very same day Noah and Shem and Ham and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them, entered the ark.” (Gen. 7:4-13; emphasis mine)


Again, Abimelech came to Isaac to request a covenant to be made between them because Abimelech saw that Jehovah was blessing them. The covenant was made and Isaac sent his visitors away. Then we read in Genesis 26:32: “Now it came about on the same day, that Isaac’s servants came in and told him about the well which they had dug, and said to him, ‘We have found water’” (emphasis mine). The author could have written, “And Isaac’s servants came in and told him...,” but so the reader would know that the water was found on the same day that Abimelech departed, it apparently was necessary to include “on the same day” explicitly in the text.

In the Old Testament narrative, for the author to make note that the event happened on the same day is fairly common because otherwise the reader would be uninformed as to whether or not the event happened on the same day as the preceding event. We conclude, therefore, that as we read the creation story, we would be wrong in assuming that one night-fall and the next sun-rise followed consecutively after the night-fall and sunrise previously mentioned in the narrative. Most of our mistakes in life are due to wrong assumptions.

On the third day of creation, God brought forth land from beneath the water. The text then describes God’s decree to make the plant kingdom to reproduce itself upon the earth. Were both these decrees made on the same solar day? The text does not say whether or not God made these decrees on the same solar day. This same observation can be made for all the six creation days. Between the evening and the morning that terminated the one creation day and the evening and morning that terminated the next creation day, there could be any number of solar days since the text does not say, “And on the same day there was evening and there was morning.”

More Observations Concerning the Creation Days

First, one important purpose of this formula was to bring the attention of the reader back to the flow of time so that this period of the episode can then be terminated. It does this very affectively too. A good narrator will keep his story moving. This formula was not included for the purpose of describing a beautiful scene at sunset but for the purpose of bringing the readers mind back to the flow of time and terminating the days of creation. At the end of the first day, the earth was still “formless and void” (Gen. 1:2). As yet there was no atmosphere as we know it and no life to enjoy a sunset.

Second, we should not be surprised to find in the first chapter of Genesis two meanings for the same word “day” rather than one because God called a number of His creations by names of what He had previously discussed. The larger whole and a smaller part of the whole were then given the same name. Why did God give to his created accomplishments the names He did? Let us take the expanse (or what we may call the sky or the atmosphere). Why did God call the expanse “heaven”? He did this because the expanse forms part of the total heaven that we see when we look at the sky, which includes, not only the sky, but the realm of the sun, moon and stars. This greater heaven was first mentioned in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” And why did God name the dry land “earth”? The total earth which included the seas was called “earth.” In Genesis 5:2-3, we read, “And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.” In this verse, the earth refers to the larger area of earth that included the land which was covered at that time with water. And why did God call Adam and Eve by the name “Adam” as recorded in Genesis 5? If we realize that the word for mankind in Hebrew is also ’adam, we can see that Adam and Eve were called ’adam because they were a part of the greater human race, which was also called ’adam in Genesis, chapter 1.

Let us now summarize:

     General                                                     Particular

     Heaven (sky and lights)                              Heaven (sky only)

     Earth (ocean and land)                               Earth (land only) (Gen. 1:10)

     Man (mankind)                                          Man (Adam and Eve only) (Gen. 5:2)

God also named the water “sea.” God could have called the water “the deep,” which was the term used for the condition of the earth before the continents were formed. It is difficult to know why He didn’t do this, but this word possibly had negative connotations, which He felt should not be associated with the seas that He formed and called “good.” Genesis 1 brings us through God’s creative acts, as He took the earth from a useless place to a habitat suited for mankind; with this in mind, we can see that to bring over terminology with previous negative connotations probably would have seemed counter productive to the Spirit of God. But God named two other created phenomena—day and night. Since God called the daylight day, is it not reasonable for us to look for a larger day which would be its greater counterpart? When we do, we find that its counterpart is God’s creation day, which is composed of shorter twelve-hour solar days. If we look for a counterpart for night, we find none. But this is expected because night is just the absence of light. Now we can finish listing our words which have general and particular meaning attached to them.

     General                                                     Particular

     Day (God’s creation Day)                          Day (a 12-hour solar day)

Notice that in all four types of these dual references—heaven, earth, man, and day—the general is partially composed of the particular, that is, the particular makes up a portion of its larger namesake.

God’s Work Day

Third, according to the Psalm 139:12, God has no problem with darkness:
Even the darkness is not dark to Thee,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to Thee.
As a result, when we are defining God’s work day, we would naturally expect it to include night as well as daylight.

Fourth, we would expect God’s creation day to be much longer than our twelve-hour solar work day. Moses knew that time is viewed differently from God’s perspective than it is from man’s perspective. Psalm 90 is entitled, “A prayer of Moses the man of God.” In this psalm we read,
For a thousand years in thy sight
Are like yesterday when it passes by,
Or as a watch in the night. (Ps. 90:4)
We would therefore expect God’s creation day to be quite long.

Moses’ Contemporary Readers

Fifth, we should assume that Moses composed his narrative such that it could be understood by readers who were knowledgeable of Hebrew teachings concerning creation and historical events. It is always helpful in interpreting literature to consider who the author had in mind that would be reading his Scriptures. In Moses’ situation, he would have been writing this to Hebrew males, those who were young students and those who were older men. These boys would have been in the process of being taught by their fathers or tutors reading, religion, and traditions of their day. These boys would know about the work week of six days of labor and then one day of rest. They might have have known that this work week was a pattern of God’s six day creation work week. Therefore, when they began to read about the creation of the heavens and the earth, they might have expected that the author would specify God’s creation days using the term day. And they would expect to find that God created the world in six creation days. They would possibly have been looking for a reference to God’s creation days, when they read, “And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” Since they would probably realize at this point in their reading that the “day,” as expressed in the evening-morning formula, was a different day from the twelve-hour solar day used previously in verse 5, they would have known immediately that the author is here specifying the end of the first creation day rather than a solar day.

A Flowing Narrative

Sixth, there is another error that the modern reader may fall into, an error which would cause him to fail to make a distinction between the twelve-hour solar day and God’s creation day. If the reader approaches Genesis as though it is simply a detailed account of what took place at the time of creation, he will be apt to miss important subtle distinctions between these two types of days. This genre is more than just an organized account of creation. The creation account is a narrative, a story of God’s creative acts; one should read it with a sense of the flow of time and with the same anticipation of coming events as if he were reading the account of Abraham’s sending his chief servant to Mesopotamia to the city of Nahor to obtain a wife for Isaac, recorded in Genesis 24. Genesis 1 is a narrative which crescendos in the creation of mankind. It was written as a narrative should be written. Narratives move along. This dynamic of the movement of time needs to be felt by the reader. In the creation story, verses 1 and 2 set the stage for the commencement of the narrative:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
Then the narrative begins at verse 3:
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
As you read about the light, you are to picture the light and the darkness as separate periods in time for the text says, “God separated the light from the darkness.” God names the day and the night. We may think the narrative of day 1 has as its thrust the creation of light. This, however, is not the major focus of day 1. As we shall further investigate in the next chapter, the author is emphasizing in Genesis 1 that God established recurring cycles which have continued on to bless mankind ever since the earth was created. Day 1 is actually a narrative of God’s creation of the day-night cycles. The creation of light was mentioned to indicate the means of God’s creation of the day-night cycle. Understanding day 1 in this way, we picture the day-night cycle as having already commenced before the progression onto evening and morning. Then you hear the text abruptly interject, “and there was evening and there was morning, one day.” If you read this narrative in this fashion (as it was intended), and you realize that the Hebrew day ended in the evening, you picture the day-night cycle as already in motion by the time you read the formula “and there was evening and there was morning.”

When you read the interjection “one day” into the flow of the narrative, you realize that this day is being defined as a different day from the day that was defined earlier in the same verse. And especially if you had heard of God’s six creation days before you read it, you would know immediately that this was the close of the first of God’s six creation days. You would understand that God’s first creation day is described and defined, not based on light and darkness, but rather upon His completing all that He had intended to do on His first creation day; so goes the narrative throughout all six creation days....

Moses Did Not Have an Alternate Word to Use for Age

Seventh...if Moses had had at his disposal a choice of a second Hebrew word such as the English word age, he probably would have still used the word yom [because the author was presenting these days as elements of God's workweek so that the Hebrews would have His example to follow when they observed their own workweek].

A Moving, Flowing Expression

Eighth, now let us view this passage with a wide angle focus in which we view these days as covering a longer period of time than six solar days. Interpreting the text in this way, we see that the formula “and there was evening and there was morning, one day” provides for the reader a natural time to break off one creation day and to begin another, while, at the same time, this formula keeps the narrative flowing. Compare the author’s use of his formula with something like the following: “This finishes the second day. Then God said…” Such a statement stops the movement of the narrative abruptly so that the reader loses the continuous flow displayed by the text. Moses’ (really the Holy Spirit’s) formula, which carries the flow of the narrative along, is better writing style.

Passages Which State God Created Everything in Six Days

The Hebrew weekly Sabbath was to be a symbolic commemoration and a worshipful remembrance of God’s completion of His creation. This is seen by how the Bible describes God’s seventh day and what the Hebrews were to do on their Sabbath day. God blessed His seventh day and sanctified it (set it apart for God). It was a day of remembrance. The Hebrews were forbidden to work on this seventh day. God instituted it so that the Hebrews would cease from their work and, in so doing, they were commemorating that Jehovah created all things and then rested. The Jewish Sabbath commemoration was not instituted so that the Hebrews would exactly repeat God’s creation week, but so that they would be reminded each week that Jehovah was their creator.

The creation days are mentioned in Exodus 20:11 and 31:17. I quote Exodus 20:9-11 here:

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or you daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Exodus 31:17 is similar to this verse.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God rested on the Sabbath day; it says that he rested on the “seventh day.” Moses was the basic author of the entire first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. When he came to refer to the creation days in Exodus 20:11 and in Exodus 31:17, he would have meant these days to refer to creation days rather than to solar days. Their context, being that of creation, makes it clear to the reader that these are creation days. As we saw earlier in this chapter, Moses had already indicated in Genesis 1 that the creation days were longer than twenty-four-hour solar days. The Exodus references should be interpreted in the light of Genesis 1. This can be understood when we realize that the first five books of the Bible were written and preserved by the Hebrews as one book, not five books. I quote from Jamieson et al: “Originally these books formed one continuous work, as in the Hebrew manuscripts they are still connected in one unbroken roll. At what time they were divided into five portions, each having a separate title, is unknown; but it is certain that the distinction dates at or before the time of the Septuagint translation.” [5]

Since God’s creation days are defined in Genesis 1 differently from either twelve-hour or twenty-four-hour solar days and because the description in Genesis 1 of what occurred during these days would seem to take longer than what normally would be accomplished in a twenty-four-hour day, the careful Hebrew reader could have understood that these creation days were longer than a twenty-four-hour day. The reader’s concept of these creation days, formed from reading Genesis 1, would certainly determine his interpretation of God’s creation days when he encountered them in Exodus 20:11 and Exodus 31:17.

Viewing God’s Creation Week from a Scientific Perspective

According to Exodus 20, the Hebrews were to labor six days and rest the seventh. Because labor and physical depletion is a personal matter, because the Bible teaches that God is omnipresent in His universe, and because the seventh day was for the purpose of resting up in preparation for a new work week, it would be interesting to know the time which would have transpired from the time of the big bang until about 6 or 7,000 years ago. Gerald L. Schroeder in The Science of God devotes two chapters to discussing the surprising conclusion of some scienctists. They calculated the average of this time that passed as viewed from each bit of space throughout the entire universe. They found the result to be six of our twenty-four-hour days! [6] This conclusion can be mathematically arrived at due to such factors as the concentrations of mass which affects the passage of time and the relative velocity of these masses according to Einstein’s theories of relativity. The Bible teaches us that God is omnipresent in His creation. God exists apart from His creation; He stands alone in His being. However, according to the scientists, if He were everywhere in His creation, the average time that He would have experienced from the big bang until about 6 or 7,000 years ago would have been six twenty-four-hour days.

[You probably have some helpful comments on the length of the creation days. If you do, please post your comments below.]

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1 Gary T. Mayer, New Evidence for Two Human Origins: Discoveries That Harmonize the Bible and Science (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouseTM, 2009).
 David G. Hagopian, ed., The Genesis Debate: Three Views on the Days of Creation (Mission Viejo, Calf.: Cruxpress), 98.
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture has been taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
4 Robert Young, Analytical Concordance to the Bible, 22nd American ed. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1970), v.s. “Night.”
Jameison et al., A Commentary, vol. 1, Part 1, iii-iv.
Gerald L. Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom (The Free Press, 1997; Broadway books, New York, 1998), 41-71. Citations are to the Broadway edition.

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