How Can There Be 24-hour Days Before the Sun Was Created?
This is a question that I hear rather frequently in my travels, and it’s easy to see why. We demark our days by the rising of the the sun every morning (in the Pacific Northwest, this is mostly taken for granted as a matter of faith since this sun itself is not often seen for three-fourths of the year). But, it’s important to try to set aside our prejudices when we come to the text; we should make every effort to exegete the text, not eisegete it, which is to say that our goal should be to extract from the text that which is on the page before us and let the Author speak to us, rather than presume to tell Him what He meant to say.
As we’ll see below, on Day 1 we already have everything we need to make a night-day cycle: a rotating sphere, and light separated from darkness. We already covered the “rotating sphere” part of this recipe in my previous blog post, “What Was the Earth Made of in the Beginning?” If you missed that, take a minute and get caught up.
Now, let’s see if we can make sense of this source of light before Day 4.
There Must Be Light
Let’s look at verse 5 in the context of the verses that precede it:
2 And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
In verse 2, we see that the earth was created in the dark…because light had not yet been created. So, we have a big ball of water sitting on the fabric of spacetime, in utter darkness. From what we can tell from this verse, this is the only matter in the nascent universe.
What does God do next? In verse 3, He speaks light into existence: “Let there be light.” And thus, light was created. He makes no explicit mention of where this light comes from, but if we dig just a little deeper, we see that in the original language, the word used for light is א֑וֹר’(ō·wr; Strong’s 216), which the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon describes in its first definition as: “light as diffused in nature, light of day Genesis 1:3,4,5 (P) Job 3:9; Job 38:19 +.” Note that the lexicon explicitly calls out Genesis 1:3, identifying the word “light” as “diffuse light,” that is light without reference to the source. It’s not a flashlight. It’s not a campfire. It’s not a candle or a torch. It’s just…light. God spoke, and there it was—light. That’s all we’re told. So, we can ask “Where did the light come from?” But we cannot reach a definitive conclusion—yet. All we know is that it did not come from the sun, stars, or any other heavenly bodies because those were not created until Day Four (Genesis 1:14–19). We need more information than what is available in this short passage. But that’s not to say that an answer cannot be found in the pages of Scripture—we’re just going to need to expand the scope of our context.
Whence Cometh Light?
While it does not seem to be possible to answer this question in just this brief passage, the Bible does give us a very big clue at the opposite end of the Book. Speaking of the New Jerusalem, the Apostle John wrote:
And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. — Revelation 21:23
And again, in the next chapter:
And there will no longer be any night, and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them, and they will reign forever and ever. — Revelation 22:5
In the absence of a sun and moon, how will the city be illumined? By the glory of God Himself. So, it would seem perfectly reasonable to infer that if God’s glory will be the source of light for those who dwell in the New Jerusalem, it was the source of light in the beginning as well.
Separating Light from Darkness
But wait…God is omnipresent (Psalm 139:7–10). If the light comes from the glory of the omnipresent God, then how can light be separated from darkness as we are told in Genesis 1:4?
Great question. The text of Genesis 1 does not provide any clues but, again, when we expand our context to include more of Scripture, the answer becomes clear. Even though God is omnipresent He has, from time to time, chosen to manifest His glory in one physical location for our benefit, notably when both the tabernacle and Solomon’s temple were dedicated:
Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of Yahweh filled the tabernacle. — Exodus 40:34
Now when Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of Yahweh filled the house. And the priests could not enter into the house of Yahweh because the glory of Yahweh filled the house of Yahweh. — 2 Chronicles 7:1, 2
Again, all we need for “an evening and a morning, one day” is a rotating sphere and light separated from darkness, and this is precisely what we see described in the first five verses of the Bible.
More Separating Light from Darkness
Even though the question is now officially answered, I’d like to call out a few more occasions in which God demonstrated His ability to separate light from darkness.
Remember the ten plagues? The ninth plague was three days of thick darkness:
So, Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days. They did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three days, but all the sons of Israel had light in their places of habitation. — Exodus 10:22, 23
Have you ever experienced thick darkness? I have…in a subterranean pool 262 feet below the ground somewhere in the mountains outside of Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Once in the pool, the darkness was so complete that I could not see my hand right in front of my face. It was an eerie sensation that made me long for light. But the darkness I experienced was not impenetrable as was the darkness that befell the Egyptians during that plague—they couldn’t even see the light coming from the Israelite homes!
God is so sovereign over His creation, that He can make a thick blanket of darkness envelop some, while others enjoy the light. We see this again during the actual exodus from Egypt:
coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel. Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other side; so neither went near the other all night long. — Exodus 14:20 (NIV)
And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night. — Exodus 14:20 (KJV)
While English translations of this passage vary a bit, the message is clear—the Egyptians were in darkness even while the Israelites enjoyed light. What’s even more interesting is that God is said to dwell in unapproachable light (1 Timothy 6:16), yet He hid His glory from the people of Israel by cloaking himself in thick darkness:
So the people stood afar off, but Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was. — Exodus 20:21 (NKJV)
He made darkness His hiding place, His canopy around Him, Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies. — Psalm 18:11 (LSB)
Yahweh reigns, let the earth rejoice; Let the many coastlands be glad. Clouds and thick darkness are all around Him; Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne. — Psalm 97:1, 2 (LSB)
After reading these verses, I have to wonder aloud whether darkness is merely the absence of light, or if it’s something else altogether? Is God so powerful that He can cloak Himself in the absence of something? Or is it that He is so creative that darkness is actually a thing which He can manipulate for His own purposes? Or maybe it’s something else.
Things that make you go, “Hmmmmmm….”
Homework
It seems that in my excitement over the act of creation, I’ve neglected to talk about something even more important: the Creator Himself. So, I want to backtrack a little and pose a deceptively simple question for your consideration:
Who created the heavens and the earth?