to distinguish Day and Night לְהַבְדִּ֕יל בֵּ֥ין הַיּ֖וֹם וּבֵ֣ין הַלָּ֑יְלָה
You remember that the verb להבדיל ‘distinguish, separate’ was an important feature of Day One and Day Two, but was absent on Day Three. Now it is back. But … uh … haven’t Day and Night already been distinguished? At least, light and darkness have been distinguished, and immediately afterward God named them Day and Night. Like the alternation of day and night that produces an earth day, this seems like a task that has already been accomplished.
Jacob Milgrom responds:1
How could the sun and moon have separated the day from the night (1:14a, 18a) if God had already done so on day one (1:4b)? The answer is that God indeed had separated them. The function of the sun and moon, however, as mentioned above, was only to manage, regulate their alternation (1:14a). This function is defined, by P’s apt term, as אֹתֹת֙ [otot], ‘signs’ (1:14b), namely, as cosmic clocks for the benefit of humanity. Being regulators and clocks, the source of their power stems from elsewhere. They themselves are inert and impotent.
[“P” in Milgrom’s comment, of course, refers to the Priestly voice (or, if you prefer, the Priestly document) in the Torah. There are a lot of reasons to understand our story as being told from the perspective of P; we’ll talk about them at greater length when we reach the seam between the two different creation accounts, in Gen 2:4.]
Milgrom’s answer to the question I posed at the beginning of today’s post can be restated (it seems to me) from a different angle: “Distinguishing” light and darkness has turned out to be not a one-time task, but a task that must be done, if not continuously, at least continually – over and over again. Now, on Day Four, “God thought” that it would be useful to have something (or someone) to handle this task for him. And yes, what God is doing in this chapter is referred to as a task (Hebrew מְלָאכָה m’lakhah) in Gen 2:2.
If you think about it, God has already set parts of creation to work for him. One might even say that this aspect of creation is getting clearer and clearer as we move forward:
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