Day and night in the Creation
21 Feb 2024
Much has been said about how there can be ‘day’ and ‘night’ during the Creation if the sun wasn't created until the fourth day.
This essay argues that Genesis 1:5's explicit naming of ‘day’ (yom) and ‘night’ (laylah) resolves the apparent chronological issue without requiring a solar source, and that the text allows for non‑24‑hour divine ‘days’.
To see this, note that Genesis 1:5 explicitly defines what is meant by ‘day’ and ‘night’:
He called ‘night’.
The Hebrew terms yom (day) and laylah (night) here serve a functional role rather than an astronomical one, reflecting ancient Near Eastern reckoning from sunset to sunset. Taking the Bible literally seems to solve the issue. God created light, and He called it ‘day’. Darkness, on the other hand, was called ‘night’.
Nowadays, the source of light that separates days is the sun. During the first few days of creation, the source had to be something else. What the source was is irrelevant – the point is that this source of light defines the day.
It also follows that there is no reason to believe the first few days of the Creation were 24 hours in length. Augustine himself cautioned against strict literal chronology, noting that divine time transcends human measurements1. It could have been longer, or even shorter. There’s not even a reason to believe that the length of the first days of the Creation were the same: each day could have had a different duration.
Notes
1 Augustine, Confessions.