‘And God saw the light, that it was good, and God separated the light from the darkness, and God called the light day and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning one day.'
“The light, that it was good”. It is not that God was in any doubt about the outcome of His word. These words are just to confirm that His word achieved what He wanted to achieve. He saw that it was as good as He knew it would be. His creation was in perfect harmony with His desires.
Now He separates light from darkness so that there will be periods of both, and the periods of light He calls ‘day' (yom) and the periods of darkness He calls ‘night'. So the term ‘yom' is used in this sentence with two meanings. In the one it describes the periods of light, in the other it describes the whole first period of creation. This reminds us that even today long periods of light in the Arctic are called an ‘Arctic day'. The term ‘day' is not quite so circumscribed as some suggest, even in our scientifically oriented era.
The truth is that this verse presents a problem for any ‘natural day' view (see introduction in book comments). Not only is ‘ yom ' shown to be capable of different meanings, and therefore not quite as specific a word as some would suggest, but also total darkness, where there is no light, and never has been, is called ‘evening'. This is a strange and unnatural use of the term evening. Surely evening, in its natural meaning, is the gloaming going into night, not the total darkness before there was light? Evening was the time for rest and relaxation, but when morning came it was the time for action. So in creation's story, having created all things, God rested and relaxed and then He acted. So in each yom, evening is the time before God acted.
Furthermore, are we then to assume that having created the heavens and the earth He waited the length of a so-called ‘natural night, before saying ‘let there be light', and then produced a ‘day' of ‘normal' length? Surely not. God works in His own time. This ‘day' is certainly extraordinary. At first, light pervades the darkness, and then God acts to separate them so as to form periods of light and darkness (of ‘days' and ‘nights') which are not said to be of any determinate length. Light is made the basic yeast of the universe and of the world, and then it becomes something which contrasts with the darkness. Is this a natural day? It is rather the principle of light and darkness, and its fluctuation, that is established here. He made the process. There is no suggestion that it is formulated into time cycles. That is something that he stresses happened on ‘day four', when the sun specifically determines the length of a day.
So we are asked by some to assume that God, for the first three ‘days, artificially made light appear according to the time span that will be fixed on day four. If this is the natural meaning of the words it appears a little strange. Surely the truth is that we are meant by the writer to see these first periods as being accomplished in God's time, and thus within the time span of His days? And thus that the ‘evening and the morning' of the first ‘day', and of each ‘day', is simply the use of a man-oriented description to indicate start and finish and to describe a completed time period, the length of which we do not know, indicating the completion of the first stage of God's purposes. God's nights results in God's days. This is not pandering to science, but simply using God-given intelligence in considering the narrative. What the writer is saying is that God is laying the basis for what is to follow, in His own way. If ‘evening' is not used in its ‘natural meaning', why should ‘day' be?
“There was evening and there was morning one day.” The Hebrew day was measured from sunset to sunset, and this thus indicated the passing of a ‘day'. But on this first day there had been no evening, unless we see it as merely a period of waiting and relaxing in readiness for the next act. And it had not resulted from a sunset, for there was no light. The phrase is metaphorical describing an evening and morning of God's activity expressed as a day of God, concerning which a thousand years is but a watch in the night (Psalms 90:4).