The Meaning of the Word "Day" in Genesis 1

Faith & Science Conversation
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[quote=“jammycakes, post:58, topic:4219”]
They also dismiss Bible verses that don’t fit in with their world views, such as 2 Peter 3:8 and Psalm 90:4, which are both rejected out of hand with hand-waving claims that “these passages aren’t about creation” when in fact both passages do talk about creation, and in fact 2 Peter 3:8 is specifically a rebuttal of the claim that the Gospel message is somehow dependent on the age of the earth.
[/quote]Let’s take a closer look at these.

2 Peter 3:8 is an allusion to Psalm 90:4 so let’s look at Psalm 90:4 first.

Psalm 90 is about God’s eternal existence compared to man’s time bound existence. God was God before there was ever a created world. The creation is invoked only to show that God was prior to creation and is therefore uncreated. Man however, is temporal and finite and subject to God’s control including length of days.

Verse 4, in particular, says that “A thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, Or as a watch in the night.” The word “like” is communicated by the prefixed preposition kaph which means “like, as.” This verse is not intending to communicate something about the length of a day for God. It is rather communicating something about how God views time, that a long time for man is not a long time for God. It is a statement of comparison, not identity. So Psalm 90:4 isn’t saying “A thousand years are a day …” It is saying that man views a day a certain way but God doesn’t view time the same way.

Think, perhaps, of December. It may well be that the longest month of the year for a child is December. The Christmas tree, the presents in full view and Christmas never seems to get here. For parents, December may be the shortest month with decorating, shopping, wrapping, holiday parties, etc. There is never enough time. Parents and children just view things very differently. So God views time very differently. He doesn’t have his own clock. He has his own perspective.

Which then leads us to 2 Peter 3:8 which, in context, is about the longsuffering of God. In particular, Peter is addressing those who say that the apparent delay in God’s judgment is a sign of God’s apathy at best, or perhaps even that Christ won’t return because “Surely he would have come back by now if he were going to come back.”

To address this, Peter reminds his readers that God created the world long ago, that God destroyed the world by a flood (something really significant for those who deny the Genesis flood account), and that God is now preserving the world for another day of judgment. And if you think that God is delaying, remember that God doesn’t view time the way you do because “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.” Again the word “like” is actually there. It is ὡς (hos), which means “like.” It is a statement of comparison, not one of identity.

BTW, these two verses only have meaning if “day” actually means “day” a 24-hour day.

So no, YEC don’t dismiss these verses. To the contrary, we interpret them in context, understanding what they actually say (“like”) and what their purpose is in the passage. Which is ironic, that those who insist we interpret Genesis a certain way based on theological intentions suddenly want to abandon that when it comes to verses like these.

I am not sure how 2 Peter 3:8 is a direct rebuttal that the gospel message is dependent on the age of the earth. I would be interested to hear that argument. I wouldn’t say that the gospel message is dependent on the age of the earth. I think it is more precise to say that it is dependent on the Genesis creation account which seems to indicate a younger earth (though insisting on 6000 years is not a YEC position).

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Not true. I can’t think of where you might get that in the Bible. Yom in this case clearly refers to the daylight hours (the working hours) framed by a morning (boker) and an evening (erev). It only claims to mean the daylight portion, with Lailah covering the dark portion, with the light being explicitly connected to the time of work or activity. That isn’t 24 hours by any calculation. In the time before day 4, it could only mean the time when there was light (not sunlight), likely simply meaning the time of activity and work (since it is difficult to see why God would need light to work, and since this would be a normal connection to make for many of the Hebrews for whom daylight hours and toil were practically synonymous).

As might be expected, the argument about Yom is, in a strict sense, a bit silly. Since the rest of the Bible makes no special effort to connect any number to the duration of a day (like 24 hours), merely associating it with the working hours or marking it by the solar cycle, and since the daylight hours fluctuate throughout the year, we simply have no warrant to get picky about what exact duration is meant by it. I see no reason to think that thousands of years or eons are meant by the word yom, but neither does it make any sense that 24 hours is the obvious meaning until it can be shown where this is the special emphasis elsewhere in the Bible. The more obvious meaning is that each Yom connects with a period of activity and creation just as each Yom would be a period of activity for a Hebrew laborer, with divisions marked by the sunrise and sunset. To say more than this is to assume an emphasis that is simply absent and to perform a blatant act of eisegesis.

And even assuming, for no reason that I can see, that 24 hours is what is meant, it is still both the overall and the immediate contexts that dictate what semantic function a word is to assume. In a context where the narrative is clearly historical, there is no reason why Yom Sheni wouldn’t mean “second day” in (roughly but apparently not quite) the way that you want it to mean “second day”, and in a context where all or most other aspects are symbolic, it will obviously refer to symbolic periods or to some other aspect of the literary structure being used to convey a message, in which case our exegesis should be modified accordingly. This seems to have been Waltke’s point: no folks (OECs), there is no particular reason to think this meant a thousand years, but on the other hand, the context seems to lean toward a more symbolic purpose. This is exactly the point in question and it has nothing to do with the word yom itself, but with the apparently ambivalent literary features in the context that you seem to not want to accept for what might or might not be ideological reasons. In the same way, the word “day” in a Jesus parable can mean literal day, even 24 hours if you’d like, but any actual existence of this literal day is entirely superseded by the symbolism of the parable that contains it.

As to your argument that there can be mornings and evenings with no sun to mark them, I just want to understand here;

You are taking some of the most unambiguously symbolic chapters in one of the most unambiguously symbolic books in the Bible (a book that is explicitly designed to reflect some patterns in Genesis itself) in order to support a literal historical reading in Genesis 1?! Even the place names (like “Rome”) get symbolically transformed in Revelation, and dragon tails wipe a third of the stars from the sky (I would love a non-symbolic explanation for that one!), so let’s not even begin to talk about some of the other stuff. Even worse; in Rev 22:5, it says; “And there shall be night no more; and they need no light of lamp, neither light of sun; for the Lord God shall give them light: and they shall reign forever and ever”, this is very explicitly not parallel to the Genesis pattern of day and night. I’m sorry but this just carries no weight at all, even apparently militating against your point, and I can’t see why anyone would even think of defending this kind parallel if they are pushing for a literal reading of Genesis 1.

The bottom line is that you can safely depend on the early chapters of Genesis for a good many firm theological conclusions (no matter what your position on its historicity; it is rich in theological lessons), but unless you can think of some other test to finally decide what the author intended or come up with some clear and helpful genre parallels that cover all of the literary features; you can’t depend nearly as safely on any historical conclusions, and there is no good reason why you should have to.

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The Meaning of the Word “Day” in Genesis 1?

I would point you to the commonly used phrase: ‘The Day of the Dinosaurs’. A time-frame which actually stretched across Millions of years and not one, 24 hour Day.

Assuming that the word ‘Day’ MUST be referring to a literal 24 hour day, and that because one Day to the LORD is as a Thousand years, that the Earth MUST only be 6000 years old is logical sure, I can see how someone can come to that conclusion. HOWEVER! It is not the only way to interpret it, in fact, modern scientific knowledge shows without a doubt that this view is incorrect. Therefore, that view MUST be cast away to make room for others. Rinse and repeat and we will be able to answer the question correctly.

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Can you show us any place in the OT where YOM as it is used in Genesis 1 refers to anything other than a normal 24 hour day?

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It’s in reference to verse 4. Peter is talking here about scoffers who say “Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation” as an excuse for rejecting the Gospel message. His response is twofold here: first, in verses 5-7, that God created the earth, has judged it before and will do so again, but then secondly in verse 8, the statement “a day with the Lord is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day” has pretty strong overtones of “besides, so what if things have been going on the same for thousands/millions/ of years? It doesn’t change anything – God is still God, His Word still stands, and He will fulfil His promises.”

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Where in the Bible do we see YOM used with dinosaurs? I have never seen that phrase anywhere, but I may have missed it .No one disputes that YOM is sometimes used of periods longer than a normal day. But the question regards the grammatical and syntactical use of YOM in Genesis 1.

[quote=“Find_My_Way, post:64, topic:4219”]
Assuming that the word ‘Day’ MUST be referring to a literal 24 hour day,
[/quote]It’s not really an assumption. It’s an argument.

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[quote=“jammycakes, post:66, topic:4219”]
It’s in reference to verse 4. Peter is talking here about scoffers who say “Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation” as an excuse for rejecting the Gospel message.
[/quote]Actually, it is their excuse for rejecting the idea of the return of Christ, which we know because they say, “Where is the promise of his coming?” They likely were addressing the idea that Christ would return in the first generation after his ascension. They were asserting that this “long delay” was evidence that Christ was not returning. In rebuttal, Peter points out that what is “long” to man is not “long” to God. It has nothing to do with the age of the earth but with the delay between the ascension of Christ and his return, and the idea that everything continued unchanged.

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Actually, it is both.

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[quote=“jammycakes, post:69, topic:4219”]
Actually, it is both.
[/quote]It is primarily the return, and it still has nothing to do with the age of the earth.

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So why does it say “Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation”?

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[quote=“jammycakes, post:71, topic:4219”]
So why does it say “Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation”?
[/quote]Because the charge is that God is apathetic. Everything continues unchanged because God is doing nothing about the evil. And in this, they are “willingly ignorant” (KJV) of what God has already done, and in fact, the “status quo” is evidence of God’s preservation for another judgment. Were God not preserving it, it would have destroyed itself already.

But no matter, “since the beginning of creation” doesn’t change meaning based on when the creation was, whether yesterday or 16 billions years ago. It is not making any point about the age of the earth, but rather about the status quo of the earth.

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Think you might have missed the point for the section you respond to.
You keep insisting on a 24-hour day, which is found nowhere in the Bible. Am I to understand that every time yom is used in a similar grammatical context, it scrupulously points out that we are here dealing with a 24 hour day? How is that a debatable point? “Day” in Genesis unambiguously refers to the period of time between morning and evening when there is light and when “work” is being performed - which is not 24 hours unless the night is dramatically short, with the first 3 days making it clear that it isn’t even sunlight we are talking about. The maximum amount of information we can glean from this is that it refers to 7 successive periods of work wherein the world is lit up by something or other, framed by morning-evening… with nary a 24 to be found. Elsewhere in the Bible, days continue to be sandwiched by morning and evening and this cycle serves as a convenient cyclical marker of time, but with no apparent interest in exact duration, which is no surprise in the age that is particularly characterized by the non-wearing of wrist watches;-), where morning-evening are merely bookends for each work period. The point is that the actual duration of the period appears not to be a point of particular interest to the OT writers, and the framework of morning to evening is shorthand for the period of activity or work. It is the beginning-end markers that mattered to the Hebrews, a point that we stubbornly seem to to overlook in our age of hour-minute-second punctuality. I would love to know where you see the writers showing an unhealthy interest in the exact duration of this period. Anyway, I am not particularly worried about what amount of time is envisioned, and my point moved on to; “assuming, for no reason that I can see, that 24 hours is meant…”, meaning that I granted the 24 hours just to see what would happen: and the conclusion remains the same - it is largely beside the point. It does not seem reasonable to put nearly as much weight on the length of a day as you do, and I see no reason not to grant that Genesis 1 is far more reliable as a vehicle for theological conclusions than it is for historical conclusions.

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Yes but be that as it may, the passage still discusses creation, it still talks about days as an arbitrary period of time rather than 24 hour solar days in the context of creation, and it is sheer hair-splitting pedantry to suggest otherwise.

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An extremely flawed and weak argument that has been destroyed countless times yet people still cling to it like it’s their only option.

Some people have made up their minds from the start. Before they even begin to ask or look, they have decided what they will believe.

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No, I saw that. It is incorrect on a number of different levels. It shows no familiarity with the arguments.

[quote=“bren, post:73, topic:4219”]
Genesis 1 is far more reliable as a vehicle for theological conclusions than it is for historical conclusions.
[/quote]Why would you grant that? What basis is there to trust its theology if you can’t trust its history? Why would you assume it is more accurate about one than the other?

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[quote=“jammycakes, post:74, topic:4219”]
it still talks about days as an arbitrary period of time
[/quote]On what basis is it arbitrary? It makes no sense if it is arbitrary. In the passage, it refers to a specific thing–a period of time viewed by man in a different way than God views it. This are the kinds of arguments that remove any possibility of meaning from Scripture. If can take a clear word and just call its meaning “arbitrary,” what can’t we do with a word?

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Where was it destroyed? What are its weaknesses and flaws?

I happen to agree.

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Then please do so, but I am not sure how science (real or not) is going to blow away anything about the Hebrew text of Genesis. That is generally outside the purview of scientists, but perhaps there is something I am unaware of on this.

[quote=“Find_My_Way, post:79, topic:4219”]
But you’d just counter with a super special Ken Ham Haymaker
[/quote]Doubtful, since I don’t particularly like Ken Ham, I don’t read Ken Ham, and I don’t know what Ken Ham says about the Hebrew text of Genesis.

[quote=“Find_My_Way, post:80, topic:4219”]
Just know that that is NOT what I did Ten years ago
[/quote]And it’s not what I did twenty years ago.

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One of Two possibilities is the case here regarding your beliefs: Either you are correct and modern science is a lie and goes out the window. Or you are correct and the Bible is a lie because it doesn’t match up with reality.

http://www.doesgodexist.org/Pamphlets/GodsRevelationInHisRocksAndInHisWord/GodsRevelationInHisRocksAndInHisWord.html

Start there and re-train your brain. Go slow, it can be hard to challenge your deepest beliefs. But it is worth it. You know why? Because in the end, you can still keep your faith!

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Thanks for that. That’s all old stuff. Nothing new there. And more importantly, nothing about the topic of the meaning of the word “day” in Genesis 1. You said you had a bunch of websites using real science that could blow away the ideas presented about the meaning of YOM in Genesis 1. Can you post some of those for us?

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