In this article I will introduce several compelling reasons for interpreting the days of Genesis 1 in a straightforward manner that demands both their chronological succession and 24-hour duration. Then, in a following article, I will briefly consider objections to Six Day Creationist exegesis.
The Argument for Literal, Chronological Days
1. Argument from Primary Meaning.
The preponderant usage of the word “day” (Heb. yom) in the Old Testament is of a normal diurnal (daily) period. The overwhelming majority of its 2,304 appearances in the Old Testament clearly refer either to a normal, full day-and-night cycle, or to the lighted portion of that cycle. In fact, on Day 1 God himself “called” the light “day” (Gen. 1:5), establishing the temporal significance of the term in the creation week. As Berkhof declares in defending a six day creation: “In its primary meaning the word yom denotes a natural day; and it is a good rule in exegesis, not to depart from the primary meaning of a word, unless this is required by the context.”[1]
1. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 4th ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1941), 154.
2. Argument from Explicit Qualification.
So that we not miss his point, Moses relentlessly qualifies each of the six creation days by “evening and morning” (see Gen. 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31). Outside of Genesis 1 the words “evening” and “morning” appear in statements thirty-two times in the Old Testament, and in every instance they present the two parts defining a normal day (e.g., Exod. 16:13; 18:13; 27:21). Robert L. Dabney observed in defending a six day creation: “The sacred writer seems to shut us up to the literal interpretation by describing the days as comprised of its natural parts, morning and evening.”[2]
2. Robert L. Dabney. Lectures in Systematic Theology (1878; repr., Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1972), 255.
3. Argument from Numerical Prefix.
3. Hosea 6:2, which may seem like an exception, is no counter example. It either refers to the certainty of Israel’s national resurrection, using the literal time period at which a body begins to decompose (John 11:39) to underscore their hope. Or it may be alluding to Christ’s resurrection on the third day as Israel’s hope (1 Cor. 15:4).
Genesis 1 attaches a numeral to each of the creation days: first, second, third, etc. Moses affixes numerical adjectives to yom 119 times in his writings. These always signify literal days, as in circumcision on the “eighth day” (Lev. 12:3; cp. Num. 33:38). The same holds true for the 357 times numerical adjectives qualify yom outside the Pentateuch.[3] As Gerhard Hasel observes: “This triple interlocking connection of singular usage, joined by a numeral, and the temporal definition of ‘evening and morning,’ keeps the creation ‘day’ the same throughout the creation account. It also reveals that time is conceived as linear and events occur within it successively. To depart from the numerical, consecutive linkage and the ‘evening-morning’ boundaries in such direct language would mean to take extreme liberty with the plain and direct meaning of the Hebrew language.”[4]
4. Gerhard Hasel, “The ‘Days’ of Creation,” Origins 21:1 [1984], 26.
4. Argument from Numbered Series.
5. E. J. Young, Studies in Genesis One (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, n.d.), 100.
In a related though slightly different observation, we note that when yom appears in numbered series it always specifies natural days (e.g., Exod. 12:15–16; 24:16; Lev. 23:39; Num. 7:12-36; 29:17ff). Genesis 1 has a series of consecutively numbered days for a reason: to indicate sequentially flowing calendrical days. As E. J. Young observes over against the Framework view: “If Moses had intended to teach a non-chronological view of the days, it is indeed strange that he went out of his way, as it were, to emphasize chronology and sequence. . . . It is questionable whether serious exegesis of Genesis one would in itself lead anyone to adopt a non-chronological view of the days for the simple reason that everything in the text militates against it.”[5] Derek Kidner agrees: “The march of the days is too majestic a progress to carry no implication of ordered sequence; it also seems over-subtle to adopt a view of the passage which discounts one of the primary impressions it makes on the ordinary reader.”[6] Wayne Grudem concurs: “The implication of chronological sequence in the narrative is almost inescapable.”[7]
6. Derek Kidner, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary (1967; repr., Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1982), 54–55.
5. Argument from Coherent Usage.
7. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 303.
The word yom in Genesis 1 defines Days 4–6—after God creates the sun expressly for marking off days (Gen. 1:14, 18). Interestingly, Moses emphasizes Day 4 by allocating the second greatest number of words to describe it. Surely these last three days of creation are normal days. Yet nothing in the text suggests a change of temporal function for yom from the first three days: they are measured by the same temporal designator (yom), along with the same qualifiers (both numerical adjectives and “evening and morning”). Should not Days 1–3 demarcate normal days also?
6. Argument from Divine Exemplar.
The Scripture specifically patterns man’s work week after God’s own original creation week in Exodus 20:9–11:
9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (emphasis added, cf. also Exod. 31:17)
8. Lee Irons, “The Framework Interpretation Explained and Defended,” (paper presented to the Presbytery of Southern California (OPC) at its Meeting on October 15–16, 1999), 66.
And as stated there, such is not for purposes of analogy, but imitation. Besides, to what could the creation days be analogous? God dwells in timeless eternity (Isa. 57:15) and does not exist under temporal constraints (2 Pet. 3:8). Regarding the length of the creation days, Irons states that: “God has not chosen to reveal that information.”[8] But if this is the case, then Joseph Pipa is correct to write that “then the analogy is useless.”[9] Nor may we suggest that the days are anthropomorphic days, for anthropomorphic language “can be applied to God alone and cannot properly be used of the six days.”[10]
9. Joseph Pipa and David W. Hall, Did God Create in Six Days? (White Hall, WV: Tolle Lege, 2006), 172.
To make Genesis 1 a mere literary framework inverts reality: Man’s week becomes a pattern for God’s week! As Young, following G. C. Aalders, remarks: “Man is to ‘remember’ the Sabbath day, for God has instituted it. . . . The human week derives validity and significance from the creative week. The fourth commandment constitutes a decisive argument against any non-chronological scheme of the six days of Genesis one.”[11] If God did not create in six days, we have no reason for Israel’s work week—for Israel employed a six day work week followed by the day of rest before Genesis was written.
10. Young, Genesis One, 58.
7. Argument from Plural Expression.
11. Young, Genesis One, 78–79.
Exodus 20:11 and 31:17 also teach that God created the heavens and the earth “in six days” (yammim). As Robert L. Reymond reminds us: “Ages are never expressed by the word yammim.“[12] In fact, the plural yammim occurs 858 times in the Old Testament, and always refers to normal days. Exodus 20:11 (like Genesis 1) lacks any kind of poetic structure; it presents a factual accounting. By this shorthand statement, God sums up his creative activity in a way that not only comports with, but actually demands a six day creative process.
12. Robert Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998), 394.
8. Argument from Unusual Expression.
Due to the Jewish practice of reckoning days from evening to evening, the temporal pattern “evening and morning” may seem unusual (because it assumes the day began in the morning, passes into evening, and closes at the next morning). But Umberto Cassuto comments: “Whenever clear reference is made to the relationship between a given day and the next, it is precisely sunrise that is accounted the beginning of the second day.”[13] For example, Exodus 12:18 has the fourteenth evening at the conclusion of the fourteenth day (comp. Lev 23:32). Therefore, Genesis 1 presents literal days reckoned according to the non-ritual pattern—evening closing the daylight time, followed by morning which closes the darkness, thereby beginning a new day (e.g., Gen. 19:33–34; Exod. 10:13; 2 Sam. 2:32).
13. Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Part I): from Adam to Noah (Skokie, IL: Varda Books, 2012), 28.
9. Argument from Alternative Idiom.
14. Cited in Hasel, “The ‘Days’ of Creation, 21.
Had Moses intended that six days represent six eras, he could have chosen a more fitting expression: olam. This word is often translated “forever,” but it also means a long period of time (e.g. Exod. 12:24; 21:6; 27:20; 29:28; 30:21). Furthermore, has he intended to speak of ages, he should not have qualified the days with “evening and morning.”
15. Gerhard von Rad, Genesis 1–11 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1973), 65. See also, James Barr, Fundamentalism (Louisville, KY: Westminster, 1978), 40–43.
10. Argument from Scholarly Admissions.
16. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 398; Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 399; William L. Holladay, A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1988), 130; and Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann, Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 528.
Remarkably, even liberals and neo-evangelicals who deny Six Day Creationism recognize Moses meant literal days. Herman Gunkel: “The ‘days’ are of course days and nothing else.”[14] (cf. Hasel, “The ‘Days’ of Creation,” 21). Gerhard von Rad: “The seven days are unquestionably to be understood as actual days and as a unique, unrepeatable lapse of time in the world.”[15] Major lexicons also treat yom as a literal day. For instance, see Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon; Koehler and Baumgartner’s Lexicon; Holladay’s Lexicon; and Jenni and Westermann’s Theological Lexicon.[16] Finally, evangelical Old Testament scholar Victor Hamilton states the matter dogmatically: “Whoever wrote Gen. 1 believed he was talking about literal days.”[17]
Conclusion
17. Victor Hamilton, The Book of Genesis 1–17 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 54. See also Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1987), 19.
Moses informs us that God created the whole universe in the span of six chronologically successive periods of 24-hours each. And these ten arguments listed above give ample support for reading Genesis 1 literally. On Monday, I will respond to some of the objections that this reading of Genesis has received.
