How long were the days of Genesis 1?
What did God intend us to understand from the words He used?
by Russell Grigg
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Were the days of Creation Week of 24 hours duration or were they long periods of
time? This article will discuss the Hebrew ‘time’ words which the author
had available to him and what meaning he intended to convey by his choice of the
specific words he used.1
Meaning of yôm
When Moses, under the inspiration of God, compiled the account of creation in Genesis
1, he used the Hebrew word yôm for ‘day’. He combined
yôm with numbers (‘first day’, ‘second day’,
‘third day’, etc.) and with the words ‘evening and morning’,
and the first time he employed it he carefully defined the meaning of yôm
(used in this way) as being one night/day cycle (Genesis
1:5). Thereafter, throughout the Bible, yôm used in this
way always refers to a normal 24–hour day.2,3 There is thus a prima facie case that,
when God used the word yôm in this way, He intended to convey that
the days of creation were 24 hours long.
Let us now consider what other words God could have used, if He had wanted to convey
a much longer period of time than 24 hours.
Some Hebrew ‘time’ words
There are several Hebrew words which refer to a long period of time.4 These include qedem which is the main one–word
term for ‘ancient’ and is sometimes translated ‘of old’;
olam means ‘everlasting’ or ‘eternity’ and is translated
‘perpetual’, ‘of old’ or ‘for ever’; dor
means ‘a revolution of time’ or ‘an age’ and is sometimes
translated ‘generations’; tamid means ‘continually’
or ‘for ever’; ad means ‘unlimited time’ or ‘for
ever’; orek when used with yôm is translated ‘length
of days’; shanah means ‘a year’ or ‘a revolution
of time’ (from the change of seasons); netsach means ‘for ever’.
Words for a shorter time span include eth (a general term for time); and
moed, meaning ‘seasons’ or ‘festivals’. Let us
consider how some of these could have been used.
1. Event of long ago
If God had wanted to tell us that the creation events took place a long time in
the past, there were several ways He could have said it:
yamim (plural of yôm) alone or with ‘evening and morning’,
would have meant ‘and it was days of evening and morning’. This would
have been the simplest way, and could have signified many days and so the possibility
of a vast age.
qedem by itself or with ‘days’ would have meant ‘and
it was from days of old’.
olam with ‘days’ would also have meant ‘and it was from
days of old’.
So if God had intended to communicate an ancient creation to us, there were at least
three constructions He could have used to tell us this. However, God chose
not to use any of these.
2. A continuing event from long ago
If God had wanted to tell us that creation started in the past but continued into
the future, meaning that creation took place by some sort of theistic evolution,
there were several ways He could have said it:
dor used either alone or with ‘days’, ‘days’ and
‘nights’, or ‘evening and morning’, could have signified
‘and it was generations of days and nights’. This would have been the
best word to indicate evolution’s alleged aeons, if this had been meant.
olam with the preposition le, plus ‘days’ or ‘evening
and morning’ could have signified ‘perpetual’; another construction
le olam va-ed means ‘to the age and onward’ and is translated
‘for ever and ever’ in
Exodus 15:18.
tamid with ‘days’, ‘days’ and ‘nights’,
or ‘evening’ and ‘morning’, could have signified ‘and
it was the continuation of days’.
ad used either alone or with olam could have signified ‘and it was
for ever’.
shanah (year) could have been used figuratively for ‘a long time’,
especially in the plural.
yôm rab literally means ‘a long day’ (cf. ‘long
season’ in
Joshua 24:7, or ‘long time’ in the New American Standard Bible).
This construction could well have been used by God if He had meant us to understand
that the ‘days’ were long periods of time.
Thus, if God had wanted us to believe that he used a long–drawn–out
creative process, there were several words He could have used to tell us this.
However, God chose not to use any of these.
3. Ambiguous time
If God had wanted to say that creation took place in the past, while giving no real
indication of how long the process took, there were ways He could have done it:
yôm combined with ‘light’ and ‘darkness’,
would have signified ‘and it was a day of light and darkness’. This
could be ambiguous because of the symbolic use of ‘light’ and ‘darkness’
elsewhere in the Old Testament. However, yôm with ‘evening
and morning’, especially with a number preceding it, can never be ambiguous.
eth (‘time’) combined with ‘day’ and ‘night’
as in
Jeremiah 33:20 and
Zechariah 14:7 could have been ambiguous. Likewise eth combined
with ‘light’ and ‘darkness’ (a theoretical construction).
If any of these forms had been used, the length of the ‘days’ of creation
would have been widely open for debate. However, God chose not
to use any of these.
Author’s Intention
The following considerations show us what God intended us to understand:
1. The meaning of any part of the Bible must be decided in terms
of the intention of the author. In the case of Genesis, the intention of its author
clearly was to write a historical account. This is shown by the way in which the
Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul regarded Genesis—that is, they quoted
it as being truth, not symbolic myth or parable.5,6 It was plainly not the author’s intention
to convey allegorical poetry, fantasy, or myth. And so what God, through Moses,
said about creation in Genesis should not be interpreted in these terms.
Moses did, in fact, use some of the above ‘long–time’ words (italicized
in the examples below, with root Hebrew words in square brackets), although not
with reference to the days of creation. For example, in Genesis 1:14, he wrote,
‘Let there be lights … for seasons [moed]’;
in Genesis 6:3, ‘My spirit shall not always [olam]
strive with man’; in Genesis 9:12 ‘for
perpetual generations [olam dor]’; in Leviticus
24:2, ‘to burn continually [tamid]’;
in Numbers 24:20 ‘that he perish for ever [ad]’;
in Deuteronomy 30:20, ‘He is thy light and the length
of thy days [yôm orek]’; in Deuteronomy 32:7,
‘Remember the days of old [yôm olam]’;
and so on.
Why did God not use any of these words with reference to the creation days, seeing
that He used them to describe other things? Clearly it was His intention that the
creation days should be regarded as being normal earth-rotation days, and it was
not His intention that any longer time–frames should be inferred.
Professor James Barr, professor of Hebrew at Oxford University agrees that the words
used in Genesis 1 refer to ‘a series of six days which were the same as the
days of 24 hours we now experience’, and he says that he knows of no professor
of Hebrew at any leading university who would say otherwise.7
2. Children have no problem in understanding the meaning of Genesis.
The only reason why other ideas are entertained is because people apply concepts
from outside the Bible, principally from evolutionary/atheistic sources, to interpret
the Bible.
3. The Bible is God’s message to mankind and as such it makes
authoritative statements about reality. If one removes any portion of the Bible
from the realm of reality, God may still be communicating truth to us, but the reader
can never be sure that he understands it as the author intended. Furthermore, if
God’s communication to us is outside our realm of reality, then we cannot
know whether any account in the Bible means what the words actually say or whether
it means something entirely different, beyond our understanding. For example, if
we apply this criterion to the accounts of the resurrection of Jesus, perhaps the
words could mean that Jesus did not rise from the dead physically, but in a way
beyond our comprehension. When these sorts of word–games are played with the
Bible, the Bible loses its authority, we lose the divine perspective on reality,
and Christianity loses its life–changing power.8
4. If the ‘days’ really weren’t ordinary days,
then God could be open to the charge of having seriously misled His people for thousands
of years. Commentators universally understood Genesis in a straightforward way,
until attempts were made to harmonize the account with longs ages and then evolution.
Conclusion
In Genesis
1, God, through the ‘pen’ of Moses, is going out of His way
to tell us that the ‘days’ of creation were literal earth–rotation
days. To do this, He used the Hebrew word yôm, combined with a number
and the words ‘evening and morning’. If God had wanted to tell us it
was an ancient creation, then there were several good ways He could have done this.
If theistic evolution had been intended, then there were several constructions He
could have used. If the time factor had been meant to be ambiguous, then the Hebrew
language had ways of saying this. However, God chose not to use any construction
which would have communicated a meaning other than a literal solar day.
The only meaning which is possible from the Hebrew words used is that the ‘days’
of creation were 24–hour days. God could not have communicated this meaning
more clearly than He did in Genesis 1. The divine confirmation of this, if any is
needed, is Exodus 20:9–11, where the same word ‘days’ is used
throughout:
‘Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh
day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work,
thou, nor thy son, not thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy
cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 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.’
Further reading
References and notes
- The author is indebted to James Stambaugh, ‘The Days of Creation:
A Semantic Approach’, Journal of Creation , 5(1):70–78,
1991, for much of the material in this article, and to linguist Dr Charles Taylor
of Gosford, NSW, Australia for his advice and help regarding the Hebrew. When we
say ‘days of 24 hours duration’ we merely indicate that they were ordinary
earth-rotation days, not that they were necessarily precisely 24 hours
in length (the earth’s rotation rate is gradually slowing down).
Return to text.
- M. Saebo, in his Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament
6:22, says that yôm is: ‘the fundamental word
for the division of time according to the fixed natural alternation of day and night,
on which are based all the other units of time (as well as the calendar).’
Cited from Ref. 1, p. 72. Return to text.
- For a further discussion of the meaning of yôm,
see Charles Taylor, The first 100 words, The Good Book Co, Gosford, NSW,
Australia, 1996, p. 21. Return to text.
- [4] The Hebrew words, anglicized spellings, and biblical references
are cited from Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible.
Return to text.
- See
Mark 10:6;
13:19, for example. Return to text.
- See
Romans 5:12;
1 Corinthians 15:21–22, 45;
2 Corinthians 4:6;
1 Timothy 2:13–4:1. Return to text.
- Source: letter from Prof. James Barr
to David C.C. Watson, dated 23 April 1984. Note that Prof. Barr does not say that
he believes that Genesis is historically true; he is just telling us what, in the
unanimous opinion of the world’s leading Hebrew-language professors (including
himself), the Hebrew words used were intended to convey. Return to text.
- Adapted from Ref. 1, p. 76. Return to text.
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