Wrested Scriptures

Creative Days


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Creation
  Genesis 1:5
  Genesis 2:4
  Genesis 4:14
  Genesis 4:16,17
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Genesis 2:4
"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens."

Problem:
In attempts to make the six days of Genesis 1 into a longer period of time (in keeping with dates currently postulated for life on the earth), the word "day" in Genesis 2:4 is used to support a longer day than the period bounded by the "evening and the morning" of Genesis 2.1

Solution:
  1. "Day" in scripture is sometimes used to represent an unspecified length of time.2 The Hebrew word "yom" translated "day" in this passage is translated "time elsewhere. (e.g., Gen. 4:3; 26:8; 38:12). But when second, third, etc., occur as they do in Genesis 1, the word refers to a literal day, defined in Genesis by the "evening and the morning".

  2. As used in Genesis 2, "yom" covers the whole period when the LORD God "made the earth and the heavens". (Gen. 2:4). Failure to distinguish between these two uses of "day" have led to faulty interpretations of Genesis 1. The days of Genesis 1 are determined by light and darkness, evening and morning.

Footnotes:
  1. J.W.'s use this argument: " . . . the Bible tells of six 'days' during which life appeared. But the Bible's use of the word "day' here means a period of time and not a twenty-four hour day. Genesis 2:4 indicates this by speaking of the 'day' that Jehovah God made earth and heaven when previously it called each of six periods included in that same time a 'day'." Did Man Get Here By Evolution Or By Creation? (New York: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. 1967), p. 97. Return

  2. For example, "the day of temptation" (Psa. 95:8), "the day of adversity" (Prov. 24:10), "the day of vengeance" (Isa. 61:2), but when Scripture refers to "the fifteenth day of the same month" (Lev. 23:6), the seven days of Unleavened Bread, or the fifty days until Pentecost, the word "day" can mean only a 24 hour period. Return