is a difficulty only in the following circumstance. No doubt God instituted the alternation of light and darkness which we call day and night on the first day; but it was on the fourth day that He placed the sun and moon in the heavens, to give light on the earth, and to rule the day and the night. Therefore the regular alternation of day and night as connected with the rising and setting of the sun began only on the fourth day, and it is only since then that days like the present can have existed. Of what kind then were the three days which preceded the fourth day on which the present relation between the sun and the earth was fixed? Two things are possible. The first three days may have resembled the present days in so far that they consisted of a single alternation of light and darkness, and lasted twenty-four hours, although the alternation of light and darkness was not the result of the rising and setting of the sun, but of some other cause. In this case we should have, as the old commentators say, three natural and three "artificial" days of twenty-four hours each.' But it is also possible that the first three days simply meant in a general way that each consisted of one alternation of light and darkness, and that this alternation which now lasts for twenty-fours hours, because it depends on the rising and setting of the sun, was of longer duration before the fourth day. In this case the Hexameron would consist of three days of twenty-four hours each, and of three of uncertain duration. As we have already seen,' the first day begins with the creation of light. The period described in ver. 2, 1 1 Cf. Aug. de Gen. c. Man. i. 14. 20. 2 P. 123. in which the earth was without form and void, would therefore be before the first day. Genesis does not say how long a period elapsed between the beginning of God's creative activity and the beginning of the first of the six days. God may possibly have created the heaven and earth as a formless mass, thohu wabohu, and have begun at once to produce the kosmos from this chaos, so that only one moment preceded the first day. But it is also possible, as I have already shown,1 that the beginning of God's creative activity described in ver. 1, and the dawn of the first of the six days described in ver. 3, were separated from one another by a long period of time. We have therefore two different forms of the literal explanation of the six days. According to the first, the whole period from the beginning of the creation to the appearance of man on the earth consisted of six days of twenty-four hours each. According to the other, this period consisted first of a space of time of uncertain length, preceding the first of the six days, and secondly of six days of which the last three at any rate were each twenty-four hours long. Both theories are exegetically admissible; we must ascertain later whether they can be reconciled with the results of natural science. To these theories, which are grounded on the literal 1 P. 112. 2 "Ver. 2 describes the condition in which the earth was directly after the creation of the universe. We must consider the days of creation as ordinary days, without supposing that there was any important difference between the three first, and the three last, which were defined by sunrise and sunset." Thus Keil, Genesis, pp. 16-19. Also C. B. Geology, etc.; Sorignet, Vieth, Bosizio, and the author of Creation a recent Work of God. 3 For this theory and other similar ones, see Chalmers, Buckland, Sedgwick, Wiseman, A. Wagner, Hengstenberg, Kurtz, Vosen, Fabre d'Envieu, and others. conception of the six days, is opposed the other, according to which the week of creation does not consist of six days of twenty-four hours each, but of a period of time of uncertain duration. Different justifications of this theory have been attempted. 2 1. It has been said: "The word Jom, which is used in the Hebrew text, denotes rather an uncertain than a certain, limited period of time.' The Arabs call a period of time Jaumun, which word is evidently related to the Hebrew Jom. The expressions Ereb and Boker no doubt mean in Hebrew evening and morning, but Ereb also means confusion, disorder, and change, and Boker order, arrangement. And as every act of creation must have begun with a mighty upheaval of the forces of nature, and ended with the perfecting of the step in creation which was contemplated in the act, what can be more natural than the expression, confusion-order? 3 We should therefore not translate: And the evening and the morning were the first day,' but 'And the confusion and the order were the first period."" All this is as wrong as possible. It is not necessary to understand more Arabic than I do in order to know that the etymology and meaning of the Arabic word Jaumun is the same as that of the Hebrew word Jom, and that the first meaning of neither is an uncertain period. The supposition that the Hebrew word Jom means an uncertain rather than a limited period of time, is purely imaginary. The words Ereb and Boker 1 Mutzl, Die Urgeschichte der Erde, p. 5. may be derived from a root which means to "confuse and to order," but this does not help us much. Etymology is an uncertain guide in Hebrew as in other languages, if we wish to find out the meaning of a word; the lucus a non lucendo finds a counterpart in the Semitic language also; the surest way to ascertain the meaning of a Hebrew word always is to examine the custom of the language, and in Biblical language the primary meaning of the words Ereb and Boker is undoubtedly evening and morning. We must therefore accept the following statement : Jom means primarily day, just as Ereb and Boker mean evening and morning. No doubt a word may have other derived meanings besides its original meaning, other secondary meanings besides its real meaning; let us see therefore whether Jom is used in the Bible to express other periods of time besides a day. This is clearly the case in the plural; "in the days of Noah," means "at the time when Noah lived," and we shall find scores of such instances in the Concordance. "At the end of days" ["am Ende von Tagen," A. V., "in process of time"], means in Gen. iv. 3 and elsewhere, "after a long time," and so on. But in these instances we invariably find the plural. The singular, however, occurs in a similar way. "In that day" often means with the prophets "in that time;" usually it signifies the time of the Messiah. The misfortunes which are to overtake Israel are called "the day of destruction," "the day of God's wrath," and so on. Col. hajjom means not only "all the day," but also "always, for ever." B'jom, literally "in the day-time," invariably becomes a particle when followed by the genitive or infinitive, and should be translated "when, after that." For instance, the divine warning in Paradise should not be translated: "In the day that ye eat thereof ye shall surely die," but "If ye shall eat thereof," etc. Immediately after the Hexameron, which describes the creation of the world in six days, we find an expression which, literally translated, would run: "In the day of the creation of the heavens and the earth;" but it really means "when the heavens and the earth had been, or were, created."1 Jom does not then always mean literally "day" in Hebrew, it is used for an uncertain period, or for time generally. This further meaning is, however, of course, only derived and secondary; "day" is the original and real meaning. Now the rules of hermeneutik teach us that in explaining any passage we should first take the primary meanings of words, and only proceed to those which are secondary and derived if we have a valid reason for departing from the primary meaning. But in the passages just quoted there is no proof of any reason which would justify us in giving up the meaning "day" in the first chapter of Genesis. These passages show no doubt that "day," Jom, is used when there is no question of actual days; but as you will have observed, none of these passages are quite analogous to that which we are discussing. 2. Kurtz justifies the wider theories concerning the six days in another way in his book, Bibel und 1 Gen. ii. 4. |