“Yes, but the word day used in Genesis 1 can mean something other than an ordinary day, you know!”
The number of times I’ve heard this kind of statement from fellow Christians as I’ve been speaking over the years (on the importance of the authority of God’s Word and the need to take it at face value) is probably more than I can remember.
Of course, its proclamation has always been to somehow justify the addition of deep time to the Genesis text (e.g., “Maybe God used millions of years to create, and the ‘days’ of creation aren’t literal!”) to somehow synchronize old-earth and/or evolutionary ideas with the biblical timeline.
What’s amusing is that some people think that it’s as if simply stating this obvious truth (that the Hebrew word used for day in Genesis 1 [Yom] can mean something other than a literal day) is some resounding rebuttal to the plain reading of the Genesis text (and all the other pertinent passages from the entire body of Scripture) that clearly teaches that God created in six literal days.
It’s as if they believe you must never have known that words can have different meanings, and/or when you acknowledge that you do, they think their point has been proven, millions of years are somehow justified, and they can sit back with a grin on their face thinking “mission accomplished”!
In most cases, the person making the statement either has a very shallow understanding of how language works or, to be kinder, perhaps hasn’t really thought through what they are saying.
Again, it’s true that the Hebrew word yom (mostly translated as the word day in English) can encompass a wide range of meanings. To demonstrate, here’s the Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon’s1 list of uses of the word yom in the Bible, and I’ll include an example of their usage in Scripture alongside each:
Now, notice that six out of the seven usages occur in Genesis! So a plain reading of Genesis will acknowledge that the word yom doesn’t always mean a 24-hour day. But how do we know which of these meanings applies in any given scenario?
No one truly believes that you can just pick and choose which meaning to give a word in a given scenario. The English word run, according to one study,2 has over 645 meanings. Here’s a sentence to demonstrate a few of them.
While out for a run (1), I met a man (who I knew had previously run (2) for mayor) who’d been run (3) through by a sword and was obviously at the end of his run (4) as his last words to me were “run (5) to the hills.”
Now, anyone who understands English would know that each use of the word run here (using the exact same three letters—r-u-n) conveys the following different meanings.
Now, what if someone decided to swap these meanings around arbitrarily? For example, what would the same sentence convey if we just shifted forward one place the meaning of each use of the word run here in this sentence so that meaning 1 would be used in place of meaning 2, meaning 2 in place of meaning 3, etc., and finally meaning 5 would be in place of meaning 1. We’d now read:
While out for an escape to safety (run), I met a man (who I knew had previously gone on a journey by foot faster than a walk (run) for mayor) who’d participated in a mayoral political campaign (run) through by a sword and was obviously at the end of his impaled (run) as his last words to me were “life to the hills” (run).
Now, this may seem a little silly, but I hope this makes it glaringly obvious that arbitrarily assigning a meaning to a word from a list of meanings for it doesn’t work. You just end up with nonsense. And again, both sides agree with this. What we don’t agree on is which meaning of yom applies in Genesis 1.
Now, all translators are subject to bias. If a biblical creationist like myself, for example, insisted on translating all instances of yom as a “24-hour day,” that would be dishonest because it doesn’t always mean that. Similarly, if someone were intentionally to choose an indefinite meaning of yom because it fit their belief that Genesis can’t be teaching 24-hour creation days (because of their old earth/evolutionary assumptions), what they are doing is looking at the list and deciding which one of the meanings that fits best with what they want the text to mean and choosing it that way purposefully.
This is even worse than a random assignment of various meanings when you think it through. Why? Because functionally, you are just injecting your bias into the text and then declaring the author agrees with you! No, any honest reader should be trying to understand what the author of the document intended to communicate in the first place, not imposing what he wants the author to have said.
OK, so, how then do experts determine the meaning of any word being conveyed by the writer of any text? Well, as the Merriam-Webster dictionary reminds us, “The parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage . . . can throw light on its meaning.”3
And here we get to the heart of the matter—context. And why do I say that? Because I have never (even once) heard anyone make the statement I mentioned at the start of our discussion in the following way: “Yes, but the word day used in Genesis 1 can mean something other than an ordinary day in its context!”
In its context—that’s the part I’ve never heard, which reveals the actual argument whether people understand it or not. The real question is whether the word day in Genesis 1 means a literal day in context. Once you look at the context of the word and other corroborating verses in Scripture, it becomes obvious that the word day in Genesis 1 does in fact mean a literal 24-hour day, whether you want it to or not.
Again, simply stating the obvious fact that the word day in Genesis can have multiple meanings is as persuasive as someone saying that because the sky isn’t always blue, it means the sky isn’t necessarily blue today. But what if it is? Shouldn’t we check?
Well, yes, we should, so let’s check the text here to figure out what these days are. Genesis 1 contains the repeated refrain “evening and morning” to describe these time periods combined with a number applied to each of the yoms it mentions to differentiate these units of time from one other.
Now, do the experiment. Begin recording when the next evening comes, go throughout the night until morning, and then continue until the next evening. What have you got? A literal, approximate 24-hour time period—a day in the plainest sense of its meaning.
Now, this argument regarding the days in Genesis has been around for a while now. Experts in the Hebrew language have not only gone so far as to count exactly how many times the word yom is used in the entire Old Testament, but they have then analyzed how many times yom is used together with various combinations of other words to determine its context in all those other situations.
In all the cases outside Genesis 1, yom is always considered to be a literal day when the words evening and/or morning are present or wherever it is combined with a number.
So when Genesis 1 says “evening and the morning were the first day,” “the evening and the morning were the second day,” “the evening and the morning were the third day,” etc. it’s obvious we’re talking about a literal day.
You would have to argue that for some reason Genesis 1 should be read in an entirely different way than the rest of the Old Testament Scriptures, regarding the use of the word yom in context, to try to make it as if the word day somehow refers to long ages.
Unfortunately for our long-age proponents, we have a corroborating text outside of Genesis 1 in the Old Testament that makes it obvious what these days are in Exodus 20:11: “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.”
Now again, as obvious as this passage is that the days here are normal 24-hour days—because they are related to a literal 24-hour day of rest (the Jewish Sabbath) at the end of a literal six-day work week—there are still many Christians that would argue that perhaps this is just symbolic and that we still don’t know if these are literal days being spoken about in Genesis.
But let’s just back up a bit here and begin at verse 9 to see if we can get more insight into the matter.
Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 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. 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. Exodus 20:9–11
How much clearer could this be? What possible, “grammatical hint” is present here that the work week made up of seven literal 24-hour days that the Jewish people were to live their lives by were any different than the seven days that God created the heavens and the earth? Absolutely none.
As a matter of fact, it’s exactly the opposite. This verse (literally written by the hand of God by the way) makes the direct correlation to these days/weeks as being the exact same time periods. That is, the reason you will work six literal days and rest on the seventh is that God created in six literal days and rested on the seventh.
How reasonable would it be to make the claim, “I believe this verse is saying that the reason you will work six literal 24-hour days and rest on the seventh day is that God created in six vast, undisclosed time periods consisting of billions of years and rested on the seventh long time period”? The all-powerful creator God of the Bible could have created everything in an instant if he wanted to!
Have you ever thought to yourself why he took so long to create? Well, in Mark 2:27, Scripture reveals why he created in six literal days followed by a day of rest: “And he said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.’”
Think about it. Did God really need physical or mental rest (in the sense we do) after he created? Was he really tired because he could only do so much work each day and was so overwhelmed after putting everything together that he had to have a nap? No, he created in six literal days and rested on the seventh to model what a regular work week should be like for us.
By the way, that’s the only reason we have a seven-day week. It’s not based on some timeline in astronomy or some arbitrary reason or convenience. It’s because that’s the way God created the universe—in six days, approximately 6,000 years ago.
The vast majority of Christians believed in literal days until approximately 250 years ago when deep-time concepts began to be popularized, and the story of evolution was promoted behind it as so-called science.
Fearing to be thought of as unintellectual and unscientific, theologians at that time began to compromise the Word of God, even though they admitted it didn’t appear to be the plain reading of Genesis 1 in context. This has continued from way back then to this day, as you can see by the following quotes.
It is of course admitted that, taking this account by itself, it would be most natural to understand the word in its ordinary sense; but if that sense brings the Mosaic account into conflict with [scientific] facts and another sense avoids such conflict, then it is obligatory on us to adopt that other.4 (emphasis mine)
We have to admit here that the exegetical basis of the creationists is strong. . . In spite of the careful biblical and scientific research that has accumulated in support of the creationists’ view, there are problems that make the theory wrong to most. . . Data from various [scientific] disciplines point to a very old earth and an even older universe.5 (emphasis mine)
It is apparent that the most straightforward understanding of the Genesis record, without regard to all of the hermeneutical considerations suggested by science is that God created heaven and earth in six solar days, that man was created in the sixth day, that death and chaos entered the world after the Fall of Adam and Eve, that all of the fossils were the result of the catastrophic universal deluge which spared only Noah’s family and the animals therewith.6 (emphasis mine)
From a superficial reading of Genesis 1, the impression would seem to be that the entire creative process took place in six twenty-four-hour days. If this was the true intent of the Hebrew author…this seems to run counter to modern scientific research which indicates that the planet Earth was created several billion years ago.7 (emphasis mine)
So persuasive are these arguments for those who have taken the time to really understand them. There is now another camp willing to stretch the debate to even further and more absurd lengths. Some Hebrew scholars know that yom in Genesis 1 means “day,” but they simply don’t believe Genesis 1 really teaches that. For instance, one commentary states, “There can be little doubt that here ‘day’ has its basic sense of a 24-hour period. The mention of morning and evening, the enumeration of the days, and the divine rest on the seventh show that a week of divine activity is being described here.”8
So does the author then acknowledge the truth that God created over six 24-hour days and rested on the seventh? Unfortunately, no:
It has been unfortunate that one device which our narrative uses to express the coherence and purposiveness of the creator’s work, namely, the distribution of the various creative acts to six days, has been seized on and interpreted over-literalistically, with the result that science and Scripture have been pitted against each other instead of being seen as complementary.9
So here we see a case where even when an interpreter agrees with the fact that the days in Genesis 1 are referring to 24-hour days, they then plead to some higher level of interpretation to argue that they somehow know the author never meant for us to take the days literally to preserve “inerrancy,” while denying the plain meaning of the text.
Ask yourself whether you would be willing to apply that interpretive method to texts that speak of the virgin birth, walking on water, water into wine, miraculous healings, resurrections, etc. Do you think science and Scripture would be seen as complimentary there as well?
Now I could go on and on with quotation after quotation that are similar in nature from a wide variety of theologians, pastors, and Christian professors. But what I hope you notice here specifically, is that in every case you can see that it is the influence of “facts from science” that shaped their interpretation of God’s Word.
This ultimately means that ideas outside of Scripture have more authority in these theologians’ minds than what the Word of God clearly says, whether they acknowledge that verbally or not. And so, they impose those outside ideas onto the text and make it say what they want it to say.
Even in cases where Christians have attempted to argue against literal days in Genesis 1 from a supposed textual motivation (i.e., they state the Hebrew language justifies an old-earth interpretation without alluding to scientific influences for doing so), they fail as well.
One example was the late Gleason Archer (quoted earlier), who was a defender of biblical inerrancy, but unfortunately, one who believed that the days of Genesis couldn’t be literal days. He gave two reasons, purportedly from the text, as to why he came to this view. But each one falls flat. His first argument was as follows.
Well yes, he’s correct that the meaning of the word day here in Genesis 2 is different than the word day used in Genesis 1, but again, what is the context in each case? The phrase “in the day that” is the Hebrew word beyom, the word yom prefixed with a bet. However, that doesn’t mean that creation took place in one day, that’s just another way to say “when,” as in “when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens”.
Remember, when is an acknowledged use of yom. For example, it’s used that way in Genesis 3:5, “For God knows that when (beyom) you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
So the fact that Genesis 2:4 refers to the weeklong process in an overarching manner doesn’t contradict the six-day creation account in Genesis 1. Now, let’s look at his second argument.
Now, this is an absurd straw man. We aren’t told that Adam and Eve were created at the very end of the day, that simply can’t be found in the text. Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
As to his claim that everything God said happened on day six couldn’t have in the allotted time, biblical creationists who take the Genesis text as plainly written have already given convincing answers as to how the events of day six could fit in one day.12
An example of the most common arguments is, of course, the supposed impossibility of Adam having named “millions of animals” in one day, but one of our recent articles on the Creation Museum’s website explains:
Adam named only “birds,” “cattle,” and “beasts of the field”—probably only animals closely associated with man and not “beasts of the earth” or “creeping things.” If the created kinds correspond to modern families—as many creation biologists believe—then Adam named fewer than two hundred animals. Naming all these animals would require only a few hours at most.13
One has to ask, why would a well-educated man like Archer, so (supposedly) committed to biblical inerrancy, use such obviously weak and easily rebutted arguments? Well, in my opinion (and experience dealing with many Christians also trying to add millions of years to the Bible), it always traces back to the same source, which you can see in the quotation from him I used earlier, “This seems to run counter to modern scientific research.”
For all the internal conversations, grammatical manipulation, and theological contortions and backflips that Christian interpreters perform to try to make these ideas intellectually valid, I believe the outside world looks in on the church and just shakes its proverbial head.
Gap theory, day-age theory, framework hypothesis, theistic evolution, retroactive death, etc., make it seem as if the Bible is completely incomprehensible if it can mean so many different things and can change in accordance with what “accepted science” demands of it.
This is why many people don’t recognize the Bible’s authority in all areas outside the church in the West. Of course, that includes its most important message—the gospel—the very thing long agers often point to as the reason they feel they can reinterpret Genesis any way they want to.
The number of times I’ve heard the following sentence—uttered on the heels of someone declaring the word day doesn’t have to mean a literal day in Genesis 1—has been significant indeed: “But the age of the earth isn’t a gospel issue, so it doesn’t matter what Christians believe about Genesis!”
No, it’s not a salvific issue, but it is indirectly a gospel issue (i.e., it can affect people’s trust in the gospel). Because it has to do with biblical authority, most people have come to believe that if you can’t take the Bible as plainly written in one area, why should you believe it in any other?
And so, the warning is this: Just like many (even believers) would say we can’t trust those days in Genesis as being literal—even though that’s the way it’s plainly written there—skeptics can consistently say neither can we trust the Gospels that plainly say God sent his Son to redeem the world either.
For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. 1 Timothy 4:10
This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.
Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.