When a reader is reading Genesis and discovers that "the lights in the sky" were only created on the fourth day, he or she often tries to "explain" this and suggest that the light created on day 1 was a spiritual light that shone during the daytime to delineate daytime and thus separate day from night. After all, the first three 24-hour periods are divided into day and night, so how are they divided if not by light ?
(Implicit but usually unstated in this interpretation is the idea that the spiritual light shone for 3 periods of 12 hours and was later replaced by the physical light from the sun on the 4th day.)
I want to suggest that the first three days were, in fact, in entire darkness.
It says in the book of Revelation that eventually night itself will cease to exist (Rev 21:23-25, 22:5), yet the Torah requires things to happen at certain times, thus the cessation of the normal day-and-night cycle cannot be an existential threat to the commandments.
In fact, certain regions have nights and days that can last for multiple 24-hour periods, yet time still exists there.
In the northernmost town of Sweden, the polar night lasts for twenty-eight periods of 24 hours, while the midnight sun lasts around fifty 24-hour periods.
While there is polar night in the arctic circle, there is polar day in the antarctic circle, and vice versa.
Joshua's "long day" also violated what we consider the "normal" cycle of day and night, yet we don't consider it a challenge to or nullification of God's calendar.
If the first three days were in complete darkness, the last three days may perhaps have been in complete daylight. Thus the creation is split into two, a dark half and an illuminated half.
It fits symbolically with the themes of Bereshit:
The first letter in Bereshit is Bet, the 2nd letter of the Hebrew Alefbet, and having the numeric value of 2. God could have begun the Bible with the letter Alef, or any letter really, but instead he took the opportunity to teach us that the physical world is a world of duality.
(Implicit but usually unstated in this interpretation is the idea that the spiritual light shone for 3 periods of 12 hours and was later replaced by the physical light from the sun on the 4th day.)
I want to suggest that the first three days were, in fact, in entire darkness.
It says in the book of Revelation that eventually night itself will cease to exist (Rev 21:23-25, 22:5), yet the Torah requires things to happen at certain times, thus the cessation of the normal day-and-night cycle cannot be an existential threat to the commandments.
In fact, certain regions have nights and days that can last for multiple 24-hour periods, yet time still exists there.
In the northernmost town of Sweden, the polar night lasts for twenty-eight periods of 24 hours, while the midnight sun lasts around fifty 24-hour periods.
While there is polar night in the arctic circle, there is polar day in the antarctic circle, and vice versa.
Joshua's "long day" also violated what we consider the "normal" cycle of day and night, yet we don't consider it a challenge to or nullification of God's calendar.
If the first three days were in complete darkness, the last three days may perhaps have been in complete daylight. Thus the creation is split into two, a dark half and an illuminated half.
It fits symbolically with the themes of Bereshit:
The first letter in Bereshit is Bet, the 2nd letter of the Hebrew Alefbet, and having the numeric value of 2. God could have begun the Bible with the letter Alef, or any letter really, but instead he took the opportunity to teach us that the physical world is a world of duality.
