‘And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the world, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning a fourth day.'
Note that the activity on the fourth day is that of the establishing of the lights in the heavens to fulfil their functions. So the first sentence need not necessarily indicate that the Sun and Moon were created at this stage. Indeed we have already been told that God made ‘the heavens' in the beginning. Now the heavens begin to impinge on earth.As we have seen throughout, God first created and then from that creation produced what He wanted from what had already been established. Thus the actual creation of the lights may be seen as having taken place when creation took place almost at the beginning and when light was first ‘drawn out' from the primeval stuff. Now they are being brought forth for their tasks, and seen by the world for the first time as the atmosphere thins.
We would say in English, ‘Now God had made the two great lights', but Hebrew verbs do not have the pluperfect. Hebrew is not specific as to time. Tenses in Hebrew express either completed action (Perfect tense) or incomplete action (Imperfect tense) without saying when they took place. Here the tense is perfect to declare an action which is complete, the making of the great lights by God, at whatever time He made them. This is as an introduction to what He is about to do, the establishing of them in the heavens to control time and seasons as required for life. He had made them to rule, now He establishes their rule.
Notice that the lights are deliberately unnamed. This is in contrast with what has gone before. They are but tools for God's purposes, inanimate objects not worthy of a name. And the stars are but an afterthought hardly worthy of mention. This is deliberate. In the light of the worship of Sun, Moon and stars by the surrounding nations, the writer wants their position to be quite clear. They are but ‘lamps' in the sky.
It is significant with regard to this that ‘naming' occurs in the first three preparatory days, and that in days five and six what is made is ‘blessed' as living and reproductive, but the ‘lights' are neither named nor blessed. God does not give them names indicating their background nature. They control from afar. They are not actively involved, nor are they living. They are ‘formed' not ‘created'. All thought of their divinity or importance except as devices is deliberately excluded.
Their task is clearly stated. They mechanically ruled day and night and separated light from darkness. The latter must mean as related to the length of day and night or else it is just a repetition of ‘day one'. Thus up to this point there have been no evenings or mornings in a literal sense. The phrase ‘and the evening and the morning were of the --- day' must therefore be metaphorical, denoting beginning and ending (and will continue to be so. They are God's days, not earthly days).