Monday: The Days of Creation
In recent years there has been a trend to view the Creation week as non-literal, as a metaphor, a parable, or even a myth. This has arisen in the wake of the theory of evolution, which assumes long ages of time to account for the development of life on planet Earth.
What does the Bible teach on this subject? Why are the “days” of Creation in Genesis chapter 1 to be understood as literal, and not figurative, days?
Read Genesis 1:3-5 and Exodus 20:8-11. How is the term “day” used in these contexts?
Image © Steve Creitz from GoodSalt.com
The Hebrew word yôm, or “day”, is used consistently throughout the Creation narrative for a literal day. Nothing in the Genesis Creation narrative indicates that anything other than a literal day was meant, as we understand a single day today. In fact, some scholars who don’t believe the days were literal will, nevertheless, admit that the author’s intention was to depict literal days.
It is interesting that God Himself designates this name for the first unit of time (Gen. 1:5). Yôm, or day, is defined with the phrase “and there was evening and there was morning” (Gen. 1:5, Gen. 1:8, etc., NASB). The term is used in the singular, not the plural, meaning a single day.
Thus, the seven days of Creation are to be understood as a complete unit of time, introduced by the cardinal number ’echad (“one”) followed by ordinal numbers (second, third, fourth, etc.). This pattern indicates a consecutive sequence of days, culminating in the seventh day. There is no indication in the use of terms or in the narrative form itself that there should be any gaps between these days. The seven days of Creation are, indeed, seven days as we delineate days today.
Also, the literal nature of the day is taken for granted when God wrote with His own finger the fourth commandment, indicating that the basis for the seventh-day Sabbath rests on the sequence of a literal seven-day, Creation week.
| The Genesis Creation isn’t the only creation in the Bible. There is also the re-creation, at the Second Coming, when God will transform mortality into immortality “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet” (1 Cor. 15:52, NKJV). If, however, God can do this instantly at the re-creation, why would He use billions of years for the first creation, as theistic evolution teaches? |
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It Should be understood clearly as evident in Genesis 1:3-5 that the days of creation are literal days and nothing else.It should be noted again which much keenness,that,the day-year year principle in Numbers 14:34 can never be applied in any way to explain the concept of creation literal days. Any attempt to marry the two would make us lose the context and even the deeper truths that God intends us to know in this spiritual journey we're making.My take. Any opinion on this is welcomed.
Creation and evolution are counter opposite. A person cannot be evolutionist and still claims belief in the bible.
Evolution claims natural selection or survival of the fittest which is contradictory to the creation story because in the creation of the world each day ended with the word God himself calling his creation good six times. He ends the creation with calling it very good the seventh time at the end of chapter 1. How can you call something good when there is a basic struggle for existence?
Darwin taught there was a struggle for existence. God’s creation story tells us all animals were brought to Adam he named each one of them. Can you imagine lion and a lamb walking together? Hyenas and lion not fighting for territorial rights.
Death did not exist prior to fall because earth was in harmony with the Law of God. Darwin saw this world post fall and projected his post fall natural order of the world and applied it to God’s creation.
Darwin is absolutely correct post fall this world did not reflect the character of God. Not all things that occurs in this world are done according to the will of God.
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that[h] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. Romans 8:18-21
Currently, scholars of science, mainly biology, philosophy, geology, archeology, etc., believe in Evolutionism, not in Creationism. Why that? Because it seems very easy for everything to have arisen through creation. It seems like a simplistic explanation and people think that the beginning of the Earth and of life must have been much more complex.
Well, for God everything is easy, and for Him there is nothing difficult. In reality, the complex also exists in Creationism, it is in the mind of the Creator. It is there that the ability to plan and to bring forth what that mind wants to arise is found. The complexity of nature is within the mind of GOD, and He is able to make what he plans to appear, just as he imagined. To tell the truth, Creationism is even more complex than Evolutionism, only that complexity is within the Creator's mind.
Let's take another example, the resuscitation of the dead. When JESUS raised Lazarus, what complex ritual did He perform? None! He simply said, "Lazarus, come outside." But what He needed to be done for Lazarus to resurrect was in his mental capacity, just as it was when he created Adam and when he created Eve. Everything that is very complicated He solves and makes, apparently simple. It is the power that He has.
GOD (Trinity) created through JESUS CHRIST everything in six days. And He could have done it in one day, or in a second. But it had a purpose to create in six days, plus the seventh that was the Sabbath, to rest and remember the Creator. He wanted to establish the seven-day week, creating the Sabbath on the last day, resting on it, blessing and sanctifying. Through these three rites He created the Sabbath. Therefore, it is wrong to sanctify Sunday because it is the first day of creation; the Sabbath followed the other days, and being the last, it alone made sense to rest and bless and sanctify (separate from the rest). And, before the Sabbath, He created all things, but before Sunday, He had not yet created anything.
It is very clear in the biblical account that they were literal days, or 24 hours. GOD, predicting the distortion of the biblical account of creation, added after each day saying "there was evening and morning, the first day, the second day," etc. That is, He declared that it was a 24-hour day, with an afternoon and a morning, and that it was a day, the first, the second, the third, etc. In reality GOD is not afraid to explain it this way, because it is easy to conduct research on the age of the Earth. But evolutionists are afraid of their theory because they throw everything for billions of years ago, so it becomes very difficult to prove or disapprove of this theory.
Pat
I politely disagree with the author regarding his statement, that the "Genesis creation isn't the only creation." Frankly speaking it is!. God created all creatures/things out of non-pre-existing matter. At the coming of the messiah, we are not created BUT transformed. We must be careful, not to be ambiguous in our explanation of the word "creation". It is already being subjected by attacked by evolutionist.
Regards
Pat
I so see where you are coming from, Patricia. May I suggest that in the context of the sentence the author is accurate. There are "two creations" in Scripture: the original, and the renewal putting in place a new heavens and a new earth. At the end of the second coming and as a result of that coming, the earth is left desolate as if without form and darkness was upon the face of the deep, or abyss, the Greek word found in Genesis 20.Thus, the new heavens and earth will be created as God did with the empty earth in the beginning.
I have no problems with a literal seven days of creation in Genesis 1:3 and on through till the seventh day that God made for rest etc. However, in Genesis 1:1-2 there seems to be a phase of creation that is prior to the seven day creation phase where the earth and the atmosphere is without form and void and God's Spirit moves upon it, a phase that Genesis says nothing about how much time there was before the second and "seven day phase." Another thing to consider is that scientifically "light" automatically disperses darkness but in Genesis 1:3-5 it says that God divided the darkness from the light and called the darkness "night" and the light he called "day."
Good point. Yes, there are many that see in the verses you share a prior creation, perhaps the fiat of "God spake and it was done." The rest of the chapter is explaining God's further creative work in organizing the chaos of the empty or void condition of earth in order to sustain life.
The heavens and the earth were created in the beginning, meaning within the 7 days as well. Please read Genesis 1:1-2 carefully and you will see that this happened in the same light as in Genesis 2:20 when there was no help meet for Adam. We cannot therefore think that Adam lived in the garden for a phase then God decided to make Eve. It was in the same day that he was created that Eve was also made. I want to believe that the Earth too was created on the first day and after which God created light.
I knew a Christian many years ago who believed in the theory of evolution. My question is, if those Christians don't believe the very first chapter of the Bible, how then do they pick and choose what else to believe?
It isn't that they don't believe the very first chapter, they just don't see it as literal. They have the notion that what is important is Jesus for our salvation and that the condition of the creation story (literal verse allegory) is, in the end, immaterial given the truth of Christ.
But in that there are many difficulties that such beleivers either are not aware of or don't want to seriously consider. One issue is, indeed, the Sabbath truth. If the days are a series of many years, then what does that make of the Sabbath day? Many years? Too, they don't sufficiently address the issue of death. Death is seen as an enemy in Scripture, and if death was a part of the long ages idea of Genesis creation days, then death is redefined as a means to achieve a better end. Contradicts Scripture.
Those are but some of the issues. I just don't think they appreciate what it impacts about the nature and being of the Savior, Who is the Creator. Jesus used death to perfect creation? Jesus had to do a hit and miss chance kind of means to create. What does it also say about His being a Saviour from sin and death, if death was in place long before man came on the scene?
I agree Connie. I think that the creation week sets “time”, for all time on this earth. If you toss that out, then anything else in scripture is fair game for questioning. My question to folks who believe it is not literal is this; how then do you explain the fact that we still use, in the year 2020, a 7 day week? It is impossible to change that because that is how our world was created to function. The same thing goes for any of Gods laws, they are there because that is how we are created to function.
The way the days of creation are expressed coming to the Sabbath is one in which all of creation found its completion in the Sabbath. That is, the Sabbath was creation's destiny. The word ended or finished (kalah) used twice in the first three verses of the second chapter, carries the connotation of "coming to an end." Perhaps illustrated as if a ship, after a long journey, slips into the harbor and docks, or a train ceasing its movement at the depot. It gives the Sabbath this sense of fulfillment and fullness enriching creation itself.
This is not a comment, but a question. Is day four of creation referring to the creation of the sun, moon, and stars? If so what was used to measure a day before their creation? And final question, if something different was used to mark time before the sun, moon, and stars,does this mean that according to Genesis, there are two different systems of time, one that measures time on earth, and one that measures time before and beyond earth?
Greetings Sir Nicholas.
Allow me to correlate your question with a question which was asked by a Chemical Engineering graduate, "If God created the Sun, the moon, and the stars on the fourth day, then what was the source of light on the first day?" My answer to her was first 2 questions,"Is there any thing impossible with God? Can God have light without the sun etc?; then I asked her to read "Luke 18:27 and Revelation 21:23".
To you Sir, Can God have time without the "the measuring systems"? Why does it seem to suggest that for God to achieve His purposes He need "systems"? Is God, the Creator, subject to His creation?
Please read the following scriptures:-
Isaiah 55:8,9
Isaiah 45:11
Psalm 74:16
Psalm 104:19
Joshua 10:12-13
2 Kings 20:9-10
Job 38:1-12, 19
Job 39:1-2
Greetings to you Boykie.
Thank you for your insightful response. Indeed God is not subjected to natural laws and systems, but He's the maker of them all. If I should answer the graduate, I would have said to them that light existed before the sun as mentioned in day one. And still today through scientific instruments we are able to see fragments of that first ligt...
I'm not sure there is a definitive answer to your question. Most people I know that have thought about the question conclude that the stars certainly existed previously. Many believe the matter of this planet, which is represented as covered with water on Day 1, also existed before the creation account begins. Perhaps God arranged the solar system as we know it on Day 4?
As far as the measurement of "time" is concerned, science informs us that time is relative to the place we occupy in space. That means that a "day" on earth is different from time farther out in space. Thus the "days" in the Genesis account must have been the same sort of days we know now. (Those who believe that the whole universe was created at the beginning of Genesis must certainly have a different explanation, but Seventh-day Adventists generally recognize that the universe outside our solar system existed before Genesis 1.)
Blessings Inge.
"As far as the measurement of "time" is concerned, science informs us that time is relative to the place we occupy in space. That means that a "day" on earth is different from time farther out in space." Thank you for this bit of information, can you cite the source?
I'm just wondering if there's any correlation with scientists using light to measure distance and time in space, with the light of Genesis 1:3 (thinking out loud)...
Many of the difficulties and questions that arise with the creation narrative originate with the preconceptions that the western mind brings to it. The creation story in Genesis is not a science textbook. It is a very structured form of Hebrew (chiastic) poetry. An attempt to use the analytical tools of physics, chemistry and biology to draw scientific fact from a piece of poetry must of necessity end in nonsense. It makes no more sense than trying to use a book of poetry to understand a second order chemical reaction or the interaction of a beam of light with a field of gravity or how a computer works.
Perhaps if this poem about God’s creation was studied as poetry (which is what it is) instead of as a science textbook, it would reveal truths God intended for practical application in life and relationships rather than a confusion of quasi-scientific theories.
Just some thoughts.