A day in Genesis 1 explicitly means 24-hours. Right?
Actually, no, it does not.
Before people realized planets spin around an axis or obit a fusion reactor, they knew the Earth and sun were in a relationship. Each day consisted of light and darkness of unequal but predictable periods. Predictability made days useful, so our ancestors divided them into hours for their convenience. Men chose 24 units. God did not dictate them.
The solar relationship posed a problem for early Christians. Since days could not exist before the sun’s creation on day 4, Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine, c. 400 AD) concluded the word “day” could not mean 24-hours. He envisioned the Bible’s first chapter as a list of commands carried out instantly after the seventh day. An instantaneous creation satisfied his culture’s Greek-based understanding of the universe. However, he charged future theologians to not hold tightly to interpretation, even his. Knowledge would change our understanding of nature. The two must match if the text was inspired.
His interpretation lasted until the Reformation’s rejection of longstanding Roman Catholic dogma. Protestantism returned to a 24-hour day interpretation. However, Protestant groups disagreed on how creation played out. Sometimes Genesis 1:1 was an instantaneous creation like Augustine’s. That brought up the question of why the text used days if God created heaven and Earth instantly. Alternate interpretations surfaced. God’s glory became the light of Day 1 to some people but viewed as the creation of angels and their wars (light vs. dark) by others. Did God create animals instantly, or did he sculpt each from clay? Were they young or full-grown? Did the mammals have belly buttons?
So many questions. No definitive answers, but everyone held their beliefs dogmatically.
The Hebrew usage of the word “day” is similar to that of Greek, Latin, and English, which generally defines “day” as 24 hours, but not always. It can mean the hours of sunlight, thus less than 24-hours. The phrases, “The day of harvest,” encompasses more than the last day of gleaning, and “In Abraham’s day,” entails an entire lifetime. These examples mean context determines the length of the word “day” in each of these languages.
Consider the active verbs: create, hover, separate, made, gather, produce, increase, fill. Each one paints a picture of work. Work takes time. Every part of Genesis 1 implies time. God utilized time, watching and tweaking each particle.
Psalm 90:4 says, “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by,or like a watch in the night” (NIV). The writer bluntly states time is our concern, not God’s. Many early Jewish and Christian writers believed the psalmist meant the creation “days” lasted a thousand years each. They used a “thousand” for the concept of a big number. Things have changed. We can restate the psalmist’s sentiment in our vernacular: A billion years in your sight is like an hour that has just gone by, or a millisecond in the night. Changing units does not change the meaning. Time does not encumber God.
As the context of Genesis 1 is nature, we need to ask why the writer chose to segment creation into “days,” separated by “evening and morning. The answer to that question is poetic structure, which I will discuss in my next blog. Amazingly, if not read as a list, this Bronze Age text matches standard science perfectly.
Several forms of ancient poetry deliberately hide clues to unlock meaning. Genesis 1 repeats every detail except one, that of “season” (sacred times). Seasons have ends and beginnings just like that of days. Seasons can last less than 24-hours or linger for years. Therefore, poetically, the word “day” can be interpreted as a cosmic “season.” Whatever time it took things to come into existence is how long that day/season lasted.
Seasons. God reveals creation to us in bits and pieces. Religious and scientific knowledge did not arrive overnight, and each has come and gone, to come again. The accumulation and rediscovery process spans the entire existence of humanity. Every insight awakens new questions begging for answers. That same process exists in Genesis 1, where new things built upon previous events.
Let us be amazed at the vastness of time and the joy God expressed in creating our universe.
