Tool Alpha
Genesis, the Beginning
What the first eleven chapters say, what they do not say, and where the real arguments are.
What yom does
The Hebrew word for day covers daylight, a full day, and an era, and Genesis 1 and 2 use more than one of those.
Genesis 1:5, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: when Genesis says "day," does it have to mean a 24-hour day? In my grandfather's day, nobody locked the door. Nobody hears that as a Tuesday. The word "day" covers a stretch of daylight, a full day and night, and a whole era, and the sentence tells you which. Hebrew does the same thing, sometimes in the same verse.
Every argument about the age of the earth from this chapter runs through one noun. Its range of meaning is a matter of record. What it means in Genesis 1 is a judgment, and the two should not be confused.
In 1:5, "God called the light day" is daylight, set against night. In the same verse, evening and morning make a full day. In 2:4 "in the day that the LORD God made" is a period of time, rendered "when" in some translations. Days one to five have no definite article in Hebrew, day one is literally "one day," and the article appears only with the sixth and seventh days.
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,
Lennox counts several literal, ordinary meanings of yom in Genesis 1:1-2:4 alone: daytime, a day of evening and morning, the open-ended seventh day, and the "day" of 2:4. All are natural meanings, none figurative. He notes the missing definite article on days one to five and its presence on days six and seven. He does not land on one reading of the days. He sets out the 24-hour, day-age and framework views, takes C. John Collins's analogical days and David Gooding's creation days separated by long periods seriously, and says no major doctrine depends on which is right.
Walton grants the young-earth reading its strongest point: yom in Genesis 1 is a 24-hour day, and he says so plainly. What he denies is that the seven days are the time over which the material cosmos came into being. They are seven days of the inauguration of the cosmic temple, possibly reenacted every year, and so they have nothing to say about the age of the earth.
The young-earth position, stated at its strongest by the MacArthur Study Bible, says "day" with a number and with evening and morning cannot mean an age, that Exodus 20:8-11 confirms the week, and that Scripture does not support a creation date earlier than about 10,000 years ago. Collins's analogical view takes day in its ordinary sense applied by analogy to God, the way "the eyes of the Lord" uses the ordinary word eye.
The 24-hour reading has to explain three days of evening and morning before the sun. The day-age reading has to explain why a numbered day with evening and morning would mean an era. Walton keeps the 24-hour day but must persuade readers that the week is about something other than the making of things, which is the thing the young-earth reader thinks the verses plainly say.
Not a problem of translation. English "day" has the same range as Hebrew yom. Every version translates the word correctly. The disagreement is about what the sentence is doing.
- Lennox, Seven Days that Divide the World (2021), ch. 3
- Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One (2009), propositions 9, 10, 12
- The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), ed. John MacArthur (Crossway, 2010), notes on Genesis 1:1 and 1:5
- C. John Collins, Science and Faith (Crossway, 2003), 95, as quoted in Lennox, ch. 3
