Typically, those who espouse a young-earth, “literalist” interpretation of Genesis 1 argue that defenders of other views are interpreting the text in light of science rather than employing sound exegetical methods to let the text speak for itself. As noted previously, they employ this argument in order to present the creation controversy as a matter of choosing between God’s Word and man’s word. In fact, there is a trend nowadays for young-earth creationists to call themselves “biblical creationists,” as they argue that their view is the default biblical view.
As it happens, however, there are compelling reasons to question a strictly literalist interpretation of Genesis 1 based solely on the text itself. Indeed, as we saw in our survey of opinions from the Jewish sages and the Early Church Fathers, controversy over the proper understanding of Genesis 1 dates back centuries, long before the advent of modern cosmology or Darwinian evolutionary theory.
In this chapter, I will offer several aspects of the Genesis creation account that provide clues to the effect that there is more going on in the text than may be immediately apparent.
A Limited Account
One of the first things that becomes apparent when studying Genesis 1, and particularly in light of the overall context of scripture, is that Genesis is only covering particular creation highlights for us—much is going on “off-camera,” as it were. Consider the first few verses here:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void [or “a waste and emptiness”], and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. – Genesis 1:1-1:2
When I was a young-earther, I understood Genesis 1:1 as speaking of a simultaneous creation of heaven and earth. In accordance with the rest of the creation account, I imagined God speaking along the lines of “Let the heavens and the earth be,” at which point they would have instantly appeared together: a vast black expanse with one dark, lonely, waterlogged planet in its midst. But compare this idea with Job 38:3-7:
“Now gird up your loins like a man,
And I will ask you, and you instruct Me!
Where were you when I laid the foundation of
the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding,
Who set its measurements? Since you know.
Or who stretched the line on it?
On what were its bases sunk?
Or who laid its cornerstone,
When the morning stars sang together
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?”
While God is speaking about creation in clearly symbolic language in Job 38:3-7, it is, nonetheless, equally clear that he is speaking about the process of preparing a place—a “foundation,” as he calls it—for the earth. A foundation necessarily precedes the structure to be built upon it, thus some type of preparation was done before the earth itself was actually created. God is likely speaking generically of “the second heaven” here—what we typically think of as the universe outside of the earth. Genesis 1:1 does place the heavens before the earth in the text, but it is such a brief statement (really just a summary statement) that it is not clear what is being indicated: that the heavens and the earth were created simultaneously, or that the heavens were created first and then the earth. If we had only the Genesis text to go by, one could easily argue the matter either way, but I believe Job 38 teaches that the heavens were in fact created first.[1]
Now, moving on in Job 38:8-11, we find two more “off-camera” creation events that are not mentioned in the Genesis text:
Or who enclosed the sea with doors
When, bursting forth, it went out from the womb;
When I made a cloud its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band,
And I placed boundaries on it
And set a bolt and doors
And I said, ‘Thus far shall you come, but no farther;
And here shall your proud waves stop’?
Had we only Genesis 1:1-2 to go by, we might easily think that God created the earth with water already covering its surface—that the planet simply appeared in this state at his command. From Job 38, however, we know this is not the case. The sea had a distinct beginning of its own. Combining both passages, we see that God created the earth and then covered it with water. Note also here how God tells us that he wrapped the earth with “a cloud…and thick darkness” after the sea “went out from the womb.” This requires that the earth was not dark initially, but was wrapped in darkness after the sea was formed. This is a significant bit of information that is not even hinted at in Genesis 1, where creation Day One is defined by the separation of light and darkness as perceived from the surface of the earth.
I point these details out in order to demonstrate that Genesis 1 is a limited account. Were it not for the additional information provided by Job 38, a straightforward, “literal” reading of Genesis would actually lead to some erroneous conclusions about the creation process. That said, does any of this make any real difference in how we look at the text? A young-earth literalist would likely argue that it does not, but think for a moment here:
Is it not the least bit odd that, within the first three days of creation—a period of just seventy-two hours, according to young-earthers—God creates the heavens and the earth, floods the earth with water, wraps the waterlogged earth in darkness, allows light to reach the surface that he just darkened, disperses the cloud to form an atmosphere, and then causes the seas to retreat in order to allow dry land to appear after having just flooded the world forty-eight hours previously? A seventy-two-hour interpretation has God doing various things and then almost immediately undoing them, or at least significantly modifying them, in almost time-lapsed fashion.[2]
Now, I am not arguing here that God cannot do as he wills. I am simply saying that it seems odd that he would go through such a back-and-forth process in so short a period of time. Consider in particular his darkening the earth and then allowing light to reach its surface—all on the same day. God does not do things without good reason. The cloud and “thick darkness” must have served some purpose. Was that purpose really fulfilled and then partially negated in less than twenty-four hours?[3] At the very least, there is cause for wondering whether there might be something more going on here than first meets the eye.
Days Without the Sun
As we saw in chapter two, the early Christian writer Augustine was perplexed by the light of the first three days of Genesis 1. What was this light, if the sun was not created until Day Four? As Augustine wrote, “What kind of days these were it is extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible for us to conceive, and how much more to say!”
Young-earth teachers argue that the creation days of Genesis 1 were “ordinary days,” yet there is nothing at all ordinary about a cycle of day and night, morning and evening, without the sun. The very terms themselves originate within a solar frame of reference, based on the time it takes the earth to complete one rotation on its axis, and as viewed from the surface of the earth (over which the Spirit of God is described as moving in Genesis 1:2). It is certainly possible to posit a situation in which the earth rotated in the light of something that substituted for the sun during the first three days of Genesis 1, and to call those rotation periods “days,” but I note that the text continues the use of the same “morning” and “evening” terminology without qualification during Days Four through Six. From the author’s point of view, it’s as if there has been no change.
Now, consider the following from Genesis 1:3-5, where the first day is described:
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
Compare this with Genesis 1:14-16:
Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years; and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to light on the earth”; and it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also.
On Day One, light and darkness were separated to differentiate day from night, yet we see the same sort of differentiation repeated on Day Four. Why? According to the young-earth interpretation, this was likely a sort of ‘passing of the torch’ as God replaced the original light—whatever we might think that was—with the newly-created sun, moon, and stars. Old-earth creationists, however, point out that, in the original Hebrew, the words translated “let there be” (hayah) and “made” (asah) are in the Qal imperfect tense, which expresses an incomplete action of some type, whether past, present, or future, and can indicate a process that has been going on for some time.[4]
Old Testament scholar Gleason Archer comments that the Hebrew grammar of this passage supports translating the phrase “God made the two great lights” as “God had made the two great lights”:
Verse 16 should not be understood as indicating the creation of the heavenly bodies for the first time on the fourth creative day; rather it informs us that the sun, moon, and stars created on Day One as the source of light had been placed in their appointed places by God with a view to their eventually functioning as indicators of time (“signs, seasons, days, years”) to terrestrial observers.[5]
Thus, what we’re looking at with the sun, moon, and stars in Genesis 1:14-16 may not be a new creative act at all but rather the completion of a creative act that began in the past, as God assigns the heavenly lights certain particular functions. Dr. Hugh Ross notes that verse 14 does not say that God created the lights but simply said “let there be lights.” This is the same type of phraseology that we find in Genesis 1:3, where God says “Let there be light” from the perspective of the darkened surface of the earth, which God tells us in Job 38 was dark because he had wrapped it in a cloud:
“In the Hebrew language, they don’t have tenses like we do in English. There are three verb forms: one for commands, one for action not yet finished, and then for action that’s been completed at some unspecified time in the past. [Genesis 1:16] is in that third form. It’s telling us that the sun, moon, and stars were completed entities by the fourth creation day…”[6]
In light of these considerations, it would make sense that Genesis 1:3 is not speaking of the creation of light but rather of an act of God whereby a pre-existent light was allowed to reach the surface of the earth through an obscuring cloud cover. Indeed, according to Gesenius’ Lexicon, the Hebrew word translated “light” in Genesis 1:3 (‘owr) actually refers to “light everywhere diffused,”[7] whereas the word translated “lights” (ma’owr) in Genesis 1:14-16 means “that which affords a light, a luminary.”[8] The light of Genesis 1:3 provided general illumination but was not visible as a distinct body (such as the sun), which is consistent with light penetrating through thick cloud cover. Think here of a foggy or heavily overcast day where it’s light outside but you cannot actually see the sun.
Thus, “let the light be,” spoken from the surface of the earth in Genesis 1:3, may refer to God thinning the earth’s thick cloud cover to the point where diffuse light could reach the surface, whereas, in Genesis 1:14, “let there be lights” refers to God thinning the cloud cover even further, to the point where the sun, moon, and stars were visible as distinct points of light. This is the view espoused by Hugh Ross and other prominent old-earth creationists, and is discernible solely from the texts we’ve examined; one need not “impose science” on the text to reach this conclusion.[9]
Nevertheless, as I mentioned in chapter two, given that revelation refers to the natural world, our understanding of the natural world may help us to better understand the revelation concerning it. For this reason, while careful students of scripture certainly want to avoid imposing science on the text, science can certainly play a potential role in helping us to understand why the text reads as it does—just as it helped do away with geocentric assumptions in Joshua 10. In this instance, as Hugh Ross maintains, the thinning of the atmosphere on Day Four was for the benefit of the animals created on Days Five and Six, animals that “need the occasional visibility of the sun, moon, and stars to regulate their complex biological clocks.”[10]
David Snoke, author of A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, emphasizes the ambiguous character of the original Hebrew with regard to Day Four along the same lines as Hugh Ross and Gleason Archer, noting that Hebrew lacks the clarity of contrast “between simple past (‘made’) and past perfect (‘had made’)” that exists in English.[11] Thus, the text is not giving us a clear indication of how the creation of the lights relates to the rest of the account where timing is concerned.
Snoke also observes that the same Hebrew wording used with regard to God’s making the greater and lesser lights is also used in Genesis 2:19, where the text tells us that God made the beasts of the field and the birds of heaven.[12] Here, the text appears to place the creation of these things after the creation of man, yet Genesis 1 tells us that they were created before man. For this reason, it makes much more sense to read Genesis 2:19 as God “had made” the beasts and birds, pointing back to Genesis 1. Without this understanding, we appear to have either two separate creations of beasts and birds or else a contradiction.
Regardless of what I’ve presented here, some young-earthers (particularly KJV Onlyists) will assuredly still argue that a “straightforward” reading of Genesis 1 clearly presents the sun, moon, and stars as being actually created on Day Four, and that one need not go parsing the Hebrew unless the goal is to circumvent that clear interpretation for the sake of imposing science on the text. In response, I will say that the English is a translation of the Hebrew, and it is absolutely necessary to parse it in order to correctly translate it. This has to do with properly bringing forth the meaning of the text, not imposing anything on it.
I will now go a step further and offer the Septuagint translation of Job 38 into evidence. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. It’s the version of the Old Testament most often cited in the New Testament and which served as the standard Old Testament text for the first 1,000 years of church history. It reads a bit differently than the Hebrew in Job 38, and may offer some additional clarification of Days One and Four as presented in Genesis.
“Where were you when I was laying the earth’s foundation?
Now tell me, if you are endowed with understanding.
Who determined its measures, if you know?
Or who was it that stretched a line upon it?
On what have its rings been fastened?
Or who is he that cast a cornerstone upon it?
When the stars were born,
All my angels praised me with a loud voice.
Again, I shut up the sea with gates,
When it quivered with eagerness,
As it issued from its mother’s womb.
And I made the cloud its clothing,
And with mist I swaddled it;” [13]
I want to draw the reader’s attention to verse seven in particular: “When the stars were born, all my angels praised me with a loud voice.” Here we have God placing the birth of the stars between laying the “foundation” and “cornerstone” of the earth and the “birth” of the sea, activities that took place on Day One of Genesis, not on Day Four.[14]
Here are the same verses from an 1851 translation of the Septuagint by Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton, again with emphasis added to verse seven:[15]
Where wast thou when I founded the earth? Tell me now, if thou hast knowledge, who set the measures of it, if thou knowest? Or who stretched a line upon it? On what are its rings fastened? And who is he that laid the corner-stone upon it? When the stars were made, all my angels praised me with a loud voice. And I shut up the sea with gates, when it rushed out, coming forth out its mother’s womb.
And here is a screenshot of the passage from an interlinear edition of the Septuagint:[16]
As you can see, both the NETS and Brenton translations describe angels rejoicing when the stars were created, while the interlinear appears to describe both stars and angels praising God when the foundation of the earth was laid. All three versions, however, describe stars being in existence during Genesis Day One activities. This is a serious exegetical challenge to the standard young-earth interpretation of the Genesis creation days. At the very least, it should be enough to prompt further consideration of creation Days One and Four.
Another possibility to consider here is the view offered by the Literary Framework Hypothesis, which argues that the creation days of Genesis 1 are arranged in thematic rather than sequential order. This viewpoint breaks the six days down into two groups of three and demonstrates a parallel structure between the groups. On the first three days, God prepares various environments, and then, on the last three days, he fills these with various things.
On Day One, we have God creating the heavens and the earth, lighting the surface of the earth, and separating light from darkness. This parallels the events of Day Four, where God makes distinct luminaries to govern the day and night and to serve for signs and seasons. On Day Two, God separates “the waters above from the waters below” and forms the sky: the earth’s atmosphere. This parallels Day Five when God creates creatures to inhabit the waters and birds to fill the atmosphere. On Day Three, God gathers the waters of the earth into one location, brings forth the dry land, and causes vegetation to grow. This parallels Day Six, where God creates humans and various kinds of animals to inhabit the land and eat the vegetation.
These parallels are striking, and cannot be coincidental. Based on these things, Framework advocates argue that the events of Day Four may be recapitulation of Day One, especially given that the text references the separation of day from night/light from darkness on both days. This interpretive framework fits very well with the evidence I offered from the Septuagint of the stars existing on creation Day One.
Next in this series: More Clues in the Text
[1] As a side note, it’s difficult to see the creation of a vast black expanse with one small “formless and void” planet in it as a cause for much rejoicing on the part of the angelic host. By contrast, an explosive “Big Bang” style creation event would have been a spectacular sight. Note also that Genesis does not reveal the rejoicing of the angelic host. Again, we’re dealing with highlights here rather than with an exhaustive account.
[2] For an example of the young-earth creationist time-lapse view of creation, see the trailer for Kent Hovind’s film Genesis: Paradise Lost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVqb2ZJtxeA
[3] Actually, it had to have been within about twelve hours if we’re dealing with a standard day/night cycle here. Of course, this depends on where one is standing on the earth’s surface and in what season of the year. It might be a longer or shorter amount of time.
[4] Blue Letter Bible. Lexical aid: http://www.blbclassic.org/help/lexicalDefinitions.cfm?lang=H&num=8811
[5] Gleason Archer. Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. (Grand Rapids: MI: Baker Publishing Group, 1982), p. 52.
[6] “Did God make the sun, the moon and the stars on the fourth day?” YouTube video, 1:14 – 3:59, posted by “John Ankerberg Show.” March 24, 2010.
[7]http://www.blbclassic.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H216&t=KJV
[8] Ibid.
[9] Hugh Ross, “Did God make the sun, the moon and the stars on the fourth day?” John Ankerberg Show.
[10] Ibid.
[11] David Snoke. A Biblical Case for an Old Earth (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006), p. 147.
[12] Ibid.
[13] A New English Translation of the Septuagint (Oxford: The International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Inc., 2007), p. 693. Hereafter noted as NETS.
[14] Even though science is not our focus here, it’s worth pointing out that the stars—and one star in particular, our sun—provide an essential part of the space-time “foundation” of the earth and the life forms that call it home.
[15] The Translation of the Greek Old Testament Scriptures, Including the Apocrypha. Compiled by Sr. Lancelot C. L. Brenton, 1851.
[16] Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/InterlinearGreekEnglishSeptuagintOldTestamentPrint/page/n1931, February 19, 2019. Public domain.
