We’ve now read and discussed all of Gen 1:5, which concludes this way:
5 There was an evening and there was a morning: Day One.
וַֽיְהִי־עֶ֥רֶב וַֽיְהִי־בֹ֖קֶר י֥וֹם אֶחָֽד׃ פ
We saw that this sequence of evening and morning must explain what happened when God “distinguished light from darkness” in v. 4. No matter how we translate yom eḥad, an evening and a morning that add up to one day must mean a period of 24 hours.
This, of course, is not how our planet, let alone our universe, actually came into being. Even more obviously, we live on the surface of a sphere. When it’s evening on this side, it is simultaneously morning on that side. “An evening” and “a morning” can co-exist, but they can only be observed from far above the earth’s surface. And as we have seen, the repetition of va-yehi tells us that this evening and this morning are not simultaneous, but occurred in sequence.
But that leaves us with an important question that is hard to answer: Are we or are we not being told at which moment this first day ends? This matters because – spoiler alert, and cue music – ♫ one of these days is not like the others ♫: The seventh day will be treated differently than the other six, as a day of rest. Clearly, when the sixth day ends the seventh day will begin. But at what time of day does the “day” end and the seventh day, the day of rest, start?
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