Need Help: What is a Day?

[busterdog]

In Genesis One, we have several possible measures of time. In looking at how are are to view time, perhaps we need to cross-reference these terms to get at the intent and redemptive meaning.

My request is for posts that provide Biblical examples of measures of time, particularly where they resonate with Gen. 1 and provide an outline of the plan for the redemption of man. Perhaps with enough data points, we can bring some of these issues into focus.

There are a number of arguments about what a day is to be. Many of the TE arguments are reasonable and based upon "Searching the Scriptures." So, we give credit where it is due. However, lots of us just get the feeling that a day is a day is a day. That seems to be what God was doing in Exodus 20 in establishing the Sabbath.

My suggestion is that what we are looking for is not a smart interpretation, but an obvious literalism -- ie, one too obvious and too simple for us complicated beings.

USES OF TIME IN GEN.1

There is a legitimate point to be made that the measurement of time in Gen. 1 has some anamolies. The Word "yowm" is usually means a "day" in the ordinary sense. Hebrew had words for epochs and ages, but it generally was not "yowm." So says Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=gerald+schroeder+creation+bang&btnG=Google+Search

And God called the light "day" (yowm). However, the firmament was not created.

The suggestion is that this use of "day" before the creation of an revolving/orbiting earth (apparently on day four) could not mean a 24 hour day, since there there was no earth to revolve reflect the day/night cycle. On day four, God created the lights in the firmament to divide day from night.

Arguably, this "first day" could have been an entire age in the history of the universe. Since day was not divided from night and the greater and lesser lights were not yes established "for signs and seasons, for days and years."

This is Schroeder's argument, that the first day was about 8 billion years of post-Big Bang expansion in which matter and light became distinct. That process is a reasonable part of most creation physics, but whether or not it was a single bang is worthy of dispute.

The simpler argument is that the "evening and the morning" were indeed just a period of hours like any other day. Though, it is indeed strange that day four is when we have night and day "divided."

However, note what days are like at the other end of the Bible, if they are "days":

Rev 21:23 And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb [is] the light thereof.
Rev 22:5 And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.


SKIP AHEAD TO Mt. 6

Mat 6:31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
Mat 6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Mat 6:34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day [is] the evil thereof.

Note a number of issues in Mt. 6 that reflect the order of things in Gen. 2 (Eden). Food. Water. No wories about) clothes. Provision from GOd for people who walk in righteousness. Taking "no thought" (or knowledge or good and evil, or worry or burden or judging (see Mt. 7:1)). The sufficiency of God. And a normal day measured in hours.

Oddly enough, we go right from the sufficiency of God to what? THe sufficiency of evil? Why sufficiency? Ie, don't add the evil of tomorrow to today by worrying about it (knowledge of good and evil again). Enough is enough. And worry itself is evil. Implied in this unexpected reversal and contrast with the "sufficiency" of God for our needs is a day beginning with sunrise and ending with sunset. Yet, God is sufficient despite the nature of our now fallen world.

In psychology, this is called "magical thinking." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking Yes, I am that kind of nut, Praise the Lord.


OUR BLESSED HOPE

The doctrine of imminency of the return of Jesus also bears mention. It is measured again by the hours of the day. That it could be "any day" is an odd situation indeed, since that circumstance has lasted nearly 2,000 years.

The classic parable is of the wise and foolish virgins, reflecting the Jewish marriage custom quite exactly in terms of waiting for an unknown date of return of the bridegroom.

Mat 25:1 ¶ Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom
Mat 25:5 While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.
Mat 25:6 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.
Mat 25:13 Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.

Quite literally, we are apparently to look for the Lord's return every single day. The reference is to a specific hour. Paul mentions "in the twinkling of an eye." 1Th 5:4 But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.

Oddly enough, Jesus reads half a verse in Lk 4:19, and, as Chuck Missler teaches, the comma represents a pause of 2,000 years. Of course, the "vengeance" part is left out. "Isa 61:2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;" Similarly, we pause 2,000 years between Daniel's 69th and 70th week of years.

And each day is to be a day of expectation and looking for the Lord.

 

[busterdog]

IN THAT DAY YOU SHALL SURELY DIE.

Gen. 2 and 3 suggest an issue with the entry of physical death on a certain day that man takes upon himself the responsibility and accountability for knowing good and evil, which is of course, a lot to try to know and keep straight in your head.

One question is whether we are talking about physical death and within a certain time period.

Since the deaths of Adam and Eve are not recorded, we have some head scratching.

The reaction of Adam and Eve bears some discussion. Do Adam and Eve act like this is a bad day in Gen. 3? Yes. THey hide from God of all people. I argue that they are running for their very lives. THey have no plan for trying to work this thing out over the next 900 years. They have 24 hours to save their own skins, apparently.

How does God make good on his law for such events? Are they resurrected from the dead this same day? Maybe. Hebrews tells us that Abraham apparently had heard of physical resurrection, perhaps even from Noah himself.

It would appear to be beyond coincidence that we have the mirror image of the end of the Church Age and the return of Christ.

Gen 3:7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they [were] naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
Gen 3:8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
Gen 3:9 ¶ And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where [art] thou?
Gen 3:10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I [was] naked; and I hid myself.

Here we have a day of man hiding from a walking, talking physical God who comes to find him and who is capable of redeeming him. On a specific day when Adam has decided to worry and think things out for himself.

By contrast, we have 2,000 years in which we are supposed to be in imminent expectation of and looking for the Lord to come any day. Like Abraham, we say, "Behold me." And Maranatha. One day He will come and we will not be hiding and we won't ever be able to die.

Now we know, after years of BIble teaching, that 4,000 years of accumulated human sin, misery and complication can be resolved by God in one day. (Even Enoch could walk with God and simply ascend rather than die.)

Yet, Adam and Eve couldn't trust God to fix the eating of some fruit in one single day. And yet, we still can't manage to trust God to work our issues out one day at a time.

(What is up with the fig leaf thing? Was Adam prophetic enough to know what it would take to become one of God's chosen? Ie, circumcision. heh heh)

AN EXPANSIVE VIEW OF TIME DISTINCT FROM A "DAY"

Perhaps even in Genesis 3, the following was enough:

Rev 13:8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Apparently Jesus had "already" died for Adam and Eve.

Isn't it odd that it is easier to find that the sacrifice of Jesus spans the ages than it is to find any clear metaphor by which creation itself spanned anything more than a few 24 hour days? The Bible shows that it easily comprehends timelessness and the expance of ages. To my mind, that makes the choice of "yowm" for creation a deliberate reference to plain old days.

Of course, it does appear that there are two days at issue in the end. A day in which the Church is raptured out, solving its worldly cares and a day of vengeance, in which the sin remaining on the earth is purged away in violence and fire.


GOOD FRIDAY

Of course, between sunset and sunset on a different day, we do have a physical death. The symmetry with the warnings of Gen. 2 ("in the day you shall surely die") suggest that a 24 hour period and physical death are what God was talking about in warning. THe perfect image of man is put to death.

Another way to put this is that the death of Jesus was not a metaphor. It was a physical death, apparently beginning with sweating blood in the garden after sunset and culminating with darkness covering the earth after Jesus gives up his spirit.

EXODUS 20

As mentioned above, six literal days is pretty much the pattern established by God for work and sabbath.

Exd 20:8 ¶ Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Exd 20:9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
Exd 20:10 But the seventh day [is] the sabbath of the LORD thy God: [in it] thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that [is] within thy gates:
Exd 20:11 For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them [is], and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it

In Exodus, God reasons for hard facts to establish His law. I brought you out of Egypt, so have no other God before me. The factual premise is not a metaphorical premise.

In establishing the Sabbath, parallel reason would imply that six days means six days, since similar logic is used for preceding commandments. And of course, God is not suggesing that we work for six ages and rest on the seventh.

SABBATH DAY

Mar 2:27 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:

In view of Gen. 1 and Ex 20, this particular verse becomes all the more striking. This also means that God made the earth in six days for man specifically. God had apparently anticipated work ("cursed [is] the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat [of] it all the days of thy life;" Gen 3:17) and the need for sabbath rest, which was apparently a moot point prior to the fall of man in Gen. 3.

Since God so closely focuses on the needs of man and establishing a pattern for man, in a literary sense, a six day creation again just makes more sense.

The daily pattern established in Gen. 1 is part of the redemptive solution coming through the ten commandments. It is part of man's hope -- a day of total redemption.

 

[MatthewDiscipleofGod]

I don't have time to do a in depth reply at this time but I believe every day of creation is a 24 hour day. There was light on day one. We don't know much about that light but we know that is all we would need for 24 hour days. So I reject the idea of any kind of big bang or billions of years before the other days of Genesis. I believe that idea only comes from reading into the text the belief that we have to give into common day secular thinking with things such as the big bang. I suggest checking out my PowerPoint called Creation: 6 - 24 hour days.

As for the the you shall surly die question they did die spiritually on that day. They also started dying physically on that day but that took hundreds of years to fully take place.

 

[ThEBuRNinGLiON]

one thing everyone is forgeting now:... if we are trying to find a cross way between science and biblical creation, we understand that the big bang was caused by God, even when we acknowledge that, science itself indepidently proves that the entire universe could ahve been created in a single day, never mind just a week... oone thing that must be accountyed for is the simple theory of relativity, basically simplified now: matter was much closer in the beginning of the universe (as the universe is currently expanding), so time moved alot slower (as the universe was "denser" (in a fourth dimensional way), so if the universe did begin billions of years ago, then there is still the possibility that it happened within a few days (as what was then 1000000 years is now onlyy a day)... extreme but it is actually possible... *BANG* -there goes my head!

 

[busterdog]

one thing everyone is forgeting now:... if we are trying to find a cross way between science and biblical creation, we understand that the big bang was caused by God, even when we acknowledge that, science itself indepidently proves that the entire universe could ahve been created in a single day, never mind just a week... oone thing that must be accountyed for is the simple theory of relativity, basically simplified now: matter was much closer in the beginning of the universe (as the universe is currently expanding), so time moved alot slower (as the universe was "denser" (in a fourth dimensional way), so if the universe did begin billions of years ago, then there is still the possibility that it happened within a few days (as what was then 1000000 years is now onlyy a day)... extreme but it is actually possible... *BANG* -there goes my head!

That a six day creation is actually possible should be remembered, as you say. Whatever the scientific grounds may be.

Once we assume that it was possible, then we need to know what actually the Bible claims. For example, Jesus was not just a nice guy. He was either God incarnate or a psycho or a swindler. THere is no middle ground based upon the claims of the Bible.

There have been a number of claims about 1. whether Genesis is intended to be read literally; 2. whether the Bible is just myth anyway.

I simply dismiss number 2. and try to work on 1.

I believe the Bible intends to be taken literally. There is a scientific rational for this. Elsewhere, I posted links for setterfield.org on such matters. But, the question of what the Bible purports itself is worth examining.

To me, the idiomatic use of "Day" in the Bible generally lines up with a literal use of "day" in Gen. 1. This is my point.

I note an anomaly with the pre-sun "Days" referenced for days 1,2 and 3. They are surmountable, but I am hopin for a little enlightenment on that as well.

 

[mark kennedy]

First of all Genesis uses the word 'yowm' as a literal day. From Strong's dictionary:

"Day (Yowm 3117) - from an unused root meaning to be hot; a day (as the warm hours), whether literal (from sunrise to sunset, or from one sunset to the next)."

A couple of examples of how it is used elsewhere:

"And Ishmael his son [was] thirteen years old, when he was circumcised9 in the flesh of his foreskin.
In the selfsame day was Abraham circumcised, and Ishmael his son." (Gen. 17:25,26)

"This day came ye out in the month Abib" (Gen 13:4)

"These [are] the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim[to be] holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD, a burnt offering, and a meat offering, a sacrifice, and drink offerings, every thing upon his day:" (Gen 23:37)

You won't find this word used figurativly unless there is a very good reason. In this instance it means age:

"Now Abraham and Sarah [were] old [and] well stricken in age; [and] it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. " (Gen 18:11)

It it means forever:

"I will be suret for him; of my hand shalt thou require him: if I bring him not unto thee, and set him before thee, then let me bear the blame for ever:" (Gen 43:9)

That is overwelmingly the expection to the rule, it is the normal Hebrew word for an actual chromonlogical day.

Grace and peace,
Mark

 

[busterdog]

First of all Genesis uses the word 'yowm' as a literal day. From Strong's dictionary:

"Day (Yowm 3117) - from an unused root meaning to be hot; a day (as the warm hours), whether literal (from sunrise to sunset, or from one sunset to the next)."

A couple of examples of how it is used elsewhere:

"And Ishmael his son [was] thirteen years old, when he was circumcised9 in the flesh of his foreskin.
In the selfsame day was Abraham circumcised, and Ishmael his son." (Gen. 17:25,26)

"This day came ye out in the month Abib" (Gen 13:4)

"These [are] the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim[to be] holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD, a burnt offering, and a meat offering, a sacrifice, and drink offerings, every thing upon his day:" (Gen 23:37)

You won't find this word used figurativly unless there is a very good reason. In this instance it means age:

****

That is overwelmingly the expection to the rule, it is the normal Hebrew word for an actual chromonlogical day.

This looks like an explicit measure of a day in Gen. 1:16.

Its hard to see how "Yowm" is to mean two completely different things within the "fourth day."

Gen 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: [he made] the stars also.