the end of Day Four (Gen 1:18-19)
Reading through the story of creation
18 … God saw that it was good. וַיַּ֥רְא אֱלֹהִ֖ים כִּי־טֽוֹב׃
19 There was an evening and then a morning, a fourth day.
וַֽיְהִי־עֶ֥רֶב וַֽיְהִי־בֹ֖קֶר י֥וֹם רְבִיעִֽי׃ פ
Day Four concludes as we now expect the days of Creation Week to conclude. So let’s take a few moments to sum up the day and compare it with the earlier days, as we’ve done at the end of each day so far.
On Day Four …
God thought of the day’s creation, as on each of the first three days
“it was so,” as on each of the first three days (counting “let there be light” from Day One, and noting that “it was so” twice on Day Three
God made the day’s creation, as on Day Two
God saw that it was good, as on Day One and twice on Day Three
There was an evening and a morning
The water on Day Three heard what God wanted and got with the program, allowing the dry land to come into view and be named Earth. The Earth heard that God wanted plant life and immediately (it seems) sprouted some.
But If you want a job done right, sometimes you have to do it yourself. And that’s what happened here, when God made the lights. God had to actually make the lights, just like the cupola that God made on Day Two and named Sky. This seems to support the notion that what happens in Sky is fully under God’s control. The Sky itself does not “bring forth” anything. God must “make” it. We might guess that you make “a light” (מאור / ma’or) out of “light” (אור / or), but apparently that is none of our business.
Next, we can observe that Day Four corresponds to Day One. What I mean by this is that, though there are new creations on Day Four — the sun, moon, and stars — we have returned to the creation of Day One, light, and it is being further developed in a more complicated way. Day One’s light was separated from darkness and that episode of the story was over. Now light is being given much more complicated work to do.
Or rather the new Day Four creations are being given that work to do. If we take another look back at the Week so far, we see that …
On Day One, God separated light and darkness.
On Day Two, something that is grammatically 3rd masculine singular — either God or the cupola — separated the water above from the water below.
Now, on Day Four, the Day One job of separation, one of the tasks that is at the essence of creation, has been explicitly handed over to the lights in the Sky, even though they themselves are creatures, that is, created things. Once again, as on Day Three, God is devolving some of his power onto things in the world.
On Day Three, we began to see an Earth we could start to recognize. Now, on Day Four, we can see a recognizable Sky. And just as on Day Three the plants came forth with the ability to reproduce themselves without further intervention on God’s part, the lights in the Sky are taking over God’s responsibility to separate light and darkness. In fact, they are given dominion over the Earth.
Finally, the exegetical difficulty we had on Day One is now resolved. How can Day and Night exist, how can there be an evening and a morning to end Day and Night, without the sun? But now, at last, there is one, and the alternation of Day and Night resembles what we recognize from our own world.
Next time, we’ll talk about what that original Day One light was, and why it was replaced.