Chuck Larsen

In the first day of creation Light and darkness were separated and named “day and night” to mark the passing of the days, thus God created time! In the second day of creation you might notice that God created weather. By separating the waters below from the waters above he established a means of irrigation by either the waters on the earth or the waters above which would provide the moisture for all crops after the flood. There are those that argue that rain was an unknown before the flood, but that might not have to be the case. Regardless, either a mist came up from the earth to water it or there was water on the earth that watered it or it may have rained on the earth. Whatever, we have weather! Then the third day, Genesis 1:9 says, “And God said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so.” So we have time in day one, weather in day two and the dry ground in day three which sets the stage for agriculture which is next.

This might even be supported by Genesis 8:22. After God opened the doors of his heavenly storehouse and poured out the rain for a year which brought the flood, he caused the waters to recede and then told Noah and his children, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” You see? Seedtime and harvest refers to agriculture. Cold and heat as well as summer and winter have to do with weather and finally, day and night is again the reference for time. These are prime elements for the existence of man. MacArthur writes, “Those first three days of creation were foundational. Each day is marked by a significant division that occurs. On day one, as we saw in the previous chapter, light was divided from darkness. On day two, a firmament divided the waters above the earth from the waters below. And on day three, the dry land was separated from the sea. All of this was necessary to make the earth habitable.”^[1] God made it all for us! No other planet in the universe has what earth has and that’s because God made it for us to occupy. Isaiah 45:18 says as much: “For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited!): ‘I am the Lord, and there is no other.’”

Leupold asks a couple interesting questions about this verse. “Did depressions form and the waters rush down into them? We might think so. Or did elevations and mountains thrust themselves upward in the process of the congealing of the dry land and shed the waters as they rose?”^[2] It could have been both. In Psalm 104:5-9 we see the writer praising God for the creation and the separation of the water from dry land. It reads, “He (God) set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved. You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.”

^[1] MacArthur, John. 2001. The Battle for the Beginning: The Bible on Creation and the Fall of Adam. Nashville, TN: W Pub. Group.

^[2] Leupold, H. C. 1942. Exposition of Genesis. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.

Now God, being a God of order and not chaos, gave the “expanse” (or firmament) a name. He called it “heaven.” We read in Genesis 1:8, “And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.” But if God is not a God of confusion, what did he mean by “heaven.” First of all, it appears that the whole created order consists of three places. Exodus 20:4 says, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” It appears that “heaven” in this verse is referring to what flies in the air, or what we call “sky.” We see that in Genesis 1:20 that reads, “And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” But in Genesis 1:14-16 we see that God places the stars and moon and planets in what is referred to as “the heavens.” But what we most often think of as heaven is the Spiritual realm where God lives. We find this in 1 Kings 8:30, which says, “And listen to the plea of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place. And listen in heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.”

The Bible teaches that there are three heavens. The first heaven is the heaven that immediately surrounds us and in which the birds fly, and clouds form and rains fall and snow swirls in the winter.  Some writers call this the “atmospheric” heaven. But from the account in Genesis and comments by other prophets in the Bible there is another visible heaven. We refer to that as the “celestial” heaven. This seems to be the “second” heaven. The first two heavens are what the Psalmist tells us “Declare the glory of God.” Paul uses the same idea in the book of Romans to point out that the order, design, beauty, grandeur and magnificence of which informs of the nature of God. Not seeing that has no excuse!

But Paul talks about another heaven. In 2 Corinthians 12:2 Paul says, “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows.” This is where Jesus now sits at the right hand of the father and who has prepared a place for all those who believe in him. One internet blog describes that place like this: “There are mansions of splendor and robes that are dazzling white. The third heaven is our eternal home as children of the Most High God. It’s the city where the Lamb is the light, where tears are never shed and goodbyes are never uttered. There is no sorrow or pain, only joy and sheer perfection. It is the city where we will one day join the angels in singing, ‘Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God Almighty!’ around the throne of God.” Let me just add one thought: “Heaven is for real.”

After God creates time, or names day and night, he moves on to deal with space. When I say “space” I don’t mean outer space but just the existence of “room” like in “give me space.” Isn’t this what “separation” is really all about? Genesis 1:6 says, “And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’” Most of you KJV (King James Version) readers are more familiar with the word “firmament.” But I have to agree with Haines. He says, “…firmament is a most unfortunate mistranslation. Firmament means ‘something firm’ and seems to imply a sky something like a solid vault in which the sun, moon, and stars are fixed like light bulbs. The error had its beginning in the translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek which was made in the third century B.C. and which we call the Septuagint. The ancient Greeks conceived of the sky as a solid crystalline sphere. It was their false science which determined the Greek word used in this verse. The error was copied by Jerome in the Latin Vulgate and in turn by the translators of the King James Version.”^[1]

When we look at how the word is used in other passages it seems that the idea is more of distance between things or “space” as I mentioned. Look at Isaiah 42:5 for one example. It says, “Thus says God, the Lord,  who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to.” But whether it is a solid substance of simply “space” whatever it was it held water.

Henry Morris had some pretty good ideas as to what this might mean to us. This “separation” of the waters above from the waters below might serve as a global greenhouse, maintaining an essentially uniformly pleasant temperature all over the world. There would be no danger of global warming because there would not be great temperature variations, there would be no significant winds, and the water-rain cycle could not form. There would be no rain as we know it today. This could produce lush, tropical-like vegetation, all over the world, fed not by rain, but by a rich evaporation and condensation cycle, resulting in heavy dew or ground-fog. The vapor blanket would filter out ultraviolet radiation, cosmic rays, and other destructive energies bombarding the planet. These are known to be the cause of mutations, which decrease human longevity. Human and animal life spans would be much higher than they are today which was the case in Genesis. Now in the not so exciting side is that a vapor blanket would provide the necessary reservoir for a potential worldwide flood.^[2] Watch out!!

^[1] Lee Haines, “The Book of Genesis,” in Genesis-Deuteronomy, vol. 1:1, The Wesleyan Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1967), 26.

^[2] David Guzik, Genesis, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Ge 1:6–8.

When we get to Genesis 1:5, God wraps up his creative fiats for the first day. The text says, “God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” There are two things (at least!) to address in this verse. The first one is the fact that God named light and darkness. The second is the idea of “evening and morning” constituting a day.

God gave names to the light and to the dark. First there was darkness for it was “over the face of the deep” at the end of verse 2. God said “Let there be light” in verse 3. He said that the light was “good” in verse 4 and now he gives both of them, light and dark, the names of “day” and “night” respectively. Brayford makes an interesting observation when she writes, “Although light now exists as a counterpart to darkness and has been declared good, darkness is not eliminated. Instead, God separates the two opposite elements, thereby establishing the cycle of day (what God calls/names ‘light’) and night (what God calls/names ‘darkness’), and thus the passage of time.”^[1] Walton has a great discussion concerning this and agrees with Brayford. He says, “We conclude, then, that day one does not concern itself with the creation of the physicist’s light, that is, “light” as a physical entity with physical properties. Day one concerns something much more significant, something much more elemental to the functioning of the cosmos and to our experience of the cosmos. On day one, God created time. This is the first of the functions God will use to bring order to the chaos of the cosmos: the orderly and regular sequence of time.”^[2] (“Verrrryyyy Interesting,” as Arte Johnson would say on Laugh-in).

This was the climax of day one, but what does the writer mean by the word “day.” The handbook for translators says, “Some interpret day to refer to an indefinite period of time, but there is nothing in the context that requires the Hebrew term for day to be taken as other than an ordinary day. All the other days of creation are described by numbers that indicate their place in order or sequence: second, third, fourth, and so on.”^[3] Others will appeal to other verses that seem to use the word “day” to refer to longer periods of time. For example both the Old Testament in Psalm 90:4, we read, “For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.” Peter might be referring to this verse and substantiating its truth in 2 Peter 3:8, “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”

^[1] Susan A. Brayford, Genesis: Commentary, ed. Stanley E. Porter, Richard S. Hess, and John Jarick, Septuagint Commentary Series (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007), 210.

^[2] John H. Walton, Genesis, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 79.

^[3] William David Reyburn and Euan McG. Fry, A Handbook on Genesis, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1998), 35–36.

God was talking to Job and asking him where he was when the events of the original creation took place. When God created the heavens and the earth the angels sang together what appears to be a joyous song. Job 38:7 says, “…when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” This is one of the verses that support the idea that Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” is followed by some tragic event that left the earth in the state that’s described in Genesis 1:2, “The earth was formless and void and darkness was over the face of the deep.” Pink describes this scene. He writes, “As we have already observed, the original condition of this primary creation was vastly different from the state in which we view it in the next verse. Coming fresh from the hands of their Creator, the heaven and the earth must have presented a scene of unequaled freshness and beauty. No groans of suffering were heard to mar the harmony of the song of “the morning stars” as they sang together (Job 38:7). No worm of corruption was there to defile the perfections of the Creator’s handiwork. No iniquitous rebel was there to challenge the supremacy of God. And no death shades were there to spread the spirit of gloom. God reigned supreme, without a rival, and everything was very good.”^[1] But then, something bad happened: Sin entered into the creation as Satan rebelled and took a third of the “sons of God” with him. This left the earth “without form and void” and darkness over the face of the deep.

Pink and other proponents of the so called “gap” theory (one commentator calls it the “gap fact”), compare this situation with the situation that followed the recreation of the earth climaxing with the creation of Adam and Eve in the image of God. The description of the Garden of Eden and the wonders of God’s creation are reported as “good” with each day’s creation. Then with the creation of mankind it’s called “very” good. Every kind of fruit was available for man’s food. God fellowshipped intimately with man and would walk with them in the cool of the day. The weather was perfect! Life expectancy was eternal as far as you could tell. The tree of life was in the garden from which one would eat and live forever. Some will even argue that man had communion with the animals as well just like in some of the fairy tales of today. The point is that everything was perfect and then in Genesis 3, the leader of the fallen angels, enticed Adam and Eve and something bad happened. Sin came into the world again and the tree of life was kept from Adam and Eve because now everything would be difficult. Childbearing will be extremely difficult for the women and working the land would be nothing but “work, work, work!) and the results would not always be good. And of course, life expectancy began to decline for all living things.

But then in verse 3, the spirit of God moved over the face of the darkness and God said “let there be light.” I’ve been thinking about how the Old Testament is really about Jesus and the redemption of man from being “without form and void.” God called forth light out of the darkness to bring about order from the chaos and began the process of creating all “good” things. This is what Jesus does in the empty and chaotic lives of non-believers. Anyway, that’s the way it was for me! Jesus is indeed “the light of the world” that dispenses the darkness in our lives.

^[1] Arthur Walkington Pink, Gleanings in Genesis (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2005), 14.