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.