Words for things named by God, used to describe processes, timings and things in the first days of Genesis, have latterly gone on to have more specific, and now ubiquitous meanings, but when used in Genesis, they often preceded physical circumstances, necessary for their now current and specific use. These words are: Heavens, Earth, Darkness, Deep/Abyss, Water/Waters, Expanse/Firmament, Light, Day, Night, Morning, Evening, Expanse, Life and Death.
In Genesis chapter one, a period is being described that is before, and indeed inaugurating, the laws of physics as we know them now. So our understanding and imagination can’t be expected to grasp the reality of those periods, because it’s so far beyond and previous to our reality. The target of words used to describe that reality, are now used only for a remnant, or simile of that reality.
Whilst the following suggestions are interesting and provide a plausibly “scientific” interpretation of familiar and misunderstood verses, it’s unsafe to be certain of their meaning.
Heavens (šāmayim)
The words “Heavens” has a dual use, denoting the “spiritual realms” and the “physical sky”.
When first used in Genesis, it’s with an opening summary statement: “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth”. This suggests that there was a beginning to time and that He made everything you can see, imagine and more. It’s a ‘catch all’ phrase.
The theoretical framework of Superstring Theory (REF) postulates there are at least ten dimensions, including the perceivable three dimensions and time (the fourth dimension). So you could suggest that, “Heavens” is six dimensions and “Earth” denotes our three dimensions and time.
Earth ('ereṣ)
“Earth” itself has a few meanings; our planet, but also soil (dirt) or land. The Hebrew for Earth, 'ereṣ’ we often take to mean the whole (planet) earth.
Given the first verse is an over-arching statement, and creation includes time and the universe, “Earth” in the first verse, could mean all universal matter, energy and time, instead of just our “planet earth”.
Verse 2 continues…And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and/but (neither and nor but appear in the original Hebrew) the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness….
The “Was” hāyâ, is also translated “had become” (pluperfect form). As in when Lot’s wife was made into a pillar of salt. Which makes “but” not “and” a better interjection in the sentence.
The “Without form and void, formless and desolate tôû va bôû”, unclear and empty, this Hebrew term implies a destruction action. When used elsewhere in the Bible, it as the result of a condemnation. Jere 4:24-26 and “in vein” Isa 45:18.
So the beginning of v2 could read 2 but the earth (all universal matter and/or planet earth) had been made formless and empty, from a destruction due to a condemnation/judgement….
Darkness (ḥōšeḵ)
Is more literally “unnatural darkness” or a “darkness that may be felt” as in Exodus 10:21, so perhaps infers the Devil.
Deep/Abyss (tᵊhôm)
And unnatural darkness was upon the face of the deep which is also translated the “abyss” (the home of demons, where the anti-Christ will come from, according to Revelation(REF)).
The Spirit of God (Holy Spirit) was hovering (the word more fully infers “brooded protectively with concern” Strongs?) over the surface of the waters (pieces of matter, not shaped or not ready, to be the Earth, or other planets/stars – “messy matter”).
1 In the beginning God created everything, the spiritual and physical heavens and the earth (all dimensions, all matter and time) [no full stop, the absence is important]
2 but the earth (all universal matter and/or planet earth) had been made formless and empty, from a destruction due to a judgement and an unnatural darkness (the devil?) was upon the face of the abyss (where the anti-Christ will come from) and the Holy Spirit (God in that form, as opposed to Father or Son) was hovering in a brooding protective way over the surface of the “messy matter” that was to become the Earth, stars and planets.
Water and Waters (mayim) + Expanse (rā'qi'a)
6 Then God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 God made the expanse, and separated the waters that were below the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse; and it was so.
We could consider this water as “messy matter”, and that as all matter without yet time and energy infused to them. Collapsed, flaccid, “deflated” atoms if you like. So not just, or even at all, the “wet” stuff we now associate with the word “water”.
The alternative, and more common understanding is that where “expanse” is translated as “firmament”, “sky”, “heavens”, “atmosphere”, it is from the Hebrew rā'qi'a,, which infers an “extended surface (solid)”.
God calls for this something to be placed between the waters: a space or firmament or vault or sky or heaven (depending on the translation). This leads many to think of the word-picture of raising up the top part of the waters and inserting an open area: what we would usually think of as the "air" above the sea or land. Where the top layer, the "waters" above the sky, some suggest, are the clouds of the upper atmosphere, or simply the atmosphere itself. Others have speculated that a water "canopy" once existed in the upper atmosphere that is no longer there in our day (REF).
There’s no reason to think, even if limiting the word “expanse” to mean only “the sky” or “space” that it would look like the sky does now. The fall and flood are yet to come, which make considerable changes, for example we’re told it hadn’t rained yet (Gen 2.5) or until Noah’s flood (although one can only really deduce that it hadn’t rained until Gen 2.5), that a mist watered everything, a sort of uber protective o-zone layer.
Waters below the expanse could be that which becomes the oceans and the vast amounts of water, greater than the content of the oceans, recently found to reside within the Earth’s mantle. The waters above the expanse/gap/firmament, a sort of canopy.
But we’re also not at the point, sequentially in the story, of having “solid land”. “Stuff” or “matter” isn’t necessarily yet in the positions and shapes we’re familiar with (solids, gasses, liquids aren’t yet distinctions).
Clearly, if all matter by this point exists, water is not the only liquid, and the water we know can be fresh, salty or muddy, so it’s reasonable to understand the use of the word “waters” as an approximation for this transitionary “somethingness”, impossible to describe and no longer like this anyway.
Water is more often used as a negative thing in the Bible. It means threat, danger and transition (REF), but also refreshment (REF). Which adds credence to my thinking that this, “messing with water”, could represent the formation of the building blocks of matter, as described by the periodic table, and matter organisation that we don’t know about yet.
That this verse could represent the separation of matter, into distinct (micro) atoms - protons, neutrons and electrons, into vapours/gasses, liquids, and solids, and/or the macro formation into the blobs we call a planet, with an atmosphere, and space beyond. Indeed the gaps between, protons, neutrons and electrons could be the expanse, rather than just “sky”.
This “shifting and setting in place”, could very well imply the “injection” or creation of energy, and the storing of potential energy within matter. That which is now ebbing away through entropy, from this beginning, as is understood now by scientists (law of thermodynamics, etc), i.e. simply put, there was a beginning; matter and energy haven’t always existed.
Atoms are about 99% empty space. If you were to remove all of the empty space contained in every atom in every person on planet earth and compress us all together, then the overall volume of our particles would be smaller than a sugar cube (that weighed the sum total of everyone on earth). In a sense the matter of all the universe described until day 2, may have been this sugar cube or deflated balloon, waiting to be inflated.
This could be the making of “solid surfaces”, in keeping with the Hebrew word.
If you follow this logic, we might be surrounded by matter (anything that has a mass and occupies a given amount of volume) that is billions of years old, deflated at some point, then re-inflated 6,000 years ago, then pummelled, and mixed up 4,500 years ago. Try dating that rock now!
The use of the Water/Waters, could very well be an original wider meaning, now reduced to mean only H20 , but previously something more, or different.
Note God made (ʿāśâ) the expanse, He didn’t create (bārā') it. The Hebrew word for made has the distinction of fashioning or shaping, where as creation implies more “something out-of-nothing”.
10 And God called the dry land “earth,” and the gathering of the waters He called “seas”; and God saw that it was good.
Earth, eres, is dry land and interchangeable with the whole planet “earth”, the meaning comes from context. Note however, that this doesn’t stop the possibility, that more than dry land and/or our planet, is considered “earth” to God. He could still use the term for all matter.
Seas, yam, always seems to mean the same as we would imagine, but has warranted a new name from God, separate to Water, suggesting further that the “waters” of previous verses, should be considered more than just that which you have in a glass!
God names it, which is always relevant and God perceives (saw) that it was good, a judgement he reserves for increases of order and information. Very good is reserved for later (us + the sum of everything made).
Expanse/Firmament (rā'qi'a)
8 God called the expanse “heaven.” ...
God names this (not us, which is usually significant), He calls it “heaven”. There are three distinct heavens described in the bible. There’s the first heaven, the sky/atmosphere and space beyond our atmosphere; the 2nd is the spiritual realm (where spiritual entities can rule over parts of the physical world, and the 3rd where God resides (as named 3rd by Paul). (REF)
This is presumably emblematic of the “first heaven” the physical one, but could feasibly be considered the gaps between the stuff in atoms. It’s just such a distinction hasn’t been possible through history, so could not have been used for human comprehension, when this was first written.
As before we’re considering evening and morning, in their possible original usage, that of going from obscure and indistinguishable, to less obscure and more discernible, and this can be considered the winding up of the “system clock”, which is now winding down through entropy – by adding matter, useable energy, or information, which have since been ebbing away.
A busy day, but no mention of God thinking it "good". Perhaps since no language like DNA was added, or that things weren’t really being formed into anything, just prepared. Perhaps because of the negative connotations of dealing with “wateriness”.
This is the only day of creation that God doesn’t see or state “behold that” it is/was good or very good. Following the Jewish days of the week, this is Monday and it sounds like it was a wet day?. Thus it can be concluded that God like us, doesn’t like Mondays!
Light ('ôr)
Just “normal” light?
The most simplistic explanation could be true, that this is meant to be understood as “natural” light and that this isn’t a metaphor for spiritual light or a word having had greater meaning in the past. Before this moment, (simple) light did not exist in the physical universe (Genesis 1:2). God intends for us to understand Him as the Creator even of light itself.
But “normal” light is hardly simple
However, “simple” light (the type we now consider) in physics, is itself notoriously difficult to describe and predict how it will behave. It is very complicated. It sometimes acts as though it is made of particles, sometimes as though it is a wave. It knows when it is being observed, it behaves differently when it is! Consider the logic defying “double slit experiment”, where light is shone through two slots side by side and see the resulting light beam pattern doesn’t do what anyone would expect (REF). It deftly cuts to the heart of the weirdness of quantum mechanics. So if we struggle to describe normal sun light and know of other types, invisible to the naked eye and we know this passage is probably referring to goodness and pureness, or other physical dimensions, and not just sunlight, especially since the Sun hasn’t yet been created…
Some might object to the idea of light existing before stars or the sun. As an interesting scientific point, though, secular models such as the Big Bang, themselves theorise that light—photons—actually existed before complex forms of matter. In other words, just as the Bible stated that there was "a beginning" long before secular science admitted the same, the Bible also said that light existed before stars, well in advance of secular science coming to the same conclusion.
More than just “normal” light
When Satan the “prince of light” (REF) is described as wearing robes festooned with all types of precious stones and metal, it is to represent this “light” of many colours. [EW20] This “light” has to be more than just the type of light we now get from the Sun, because it’s specifically separated from darkness by God and it preceded the Sun.
It has been supposed that Adam and Eve had been clothed in light before they sinned (because God covers Himself with light as with a garment (Psalm 104:2) and because the Lord Jesus, in His transfiguration, was similarly arrayed (Mark 9:2-3). Perhaps they could perceive, or even had, more dimensions than us, before the fall.
All of which is to say that it is God’s glory that is the light. As in the end times, as described in Rev 21:23. “And the city (New Jerusalem, made by God not man, descends from Heaven) has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illuminated it, and its lamp is the Lamb (Jesus AKA the Word)”.
Without Him, there would be only darkness. A darkness that can be “felt”; such is the absence of God.
Multi dimensional light
A common analogy is that of Mr and Mrs “flat”. Imagine if we could perceive only in 2D, 2 dimensions, a flat world, and a sphere were to pass through our perception, it would first appear as a dot, then a growing disk or circle, then a dot and then nothing again. What if God told us a sphere had just gone by? We’d call growing-then-shrinking -circles, “spheres”. What then if God said he’d brought about “light”? Light could easily mean more than that which we get from the Sun or a torch. More could be entailed in the things God names, than we allow ourselves to consider. What is categorised as “supernatural” as a dismissive, derogatory slight on religion, can also be considered scientifically as “outside of nature” or “not yet understood”.
Energy
The phrase light could also imply the addition of some (more to follow in Day 2) energy, so we have, “matter” before (if applying gap theory) or during day 1, time and “energy” brought about in day 1.
Dry Land
9 Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so.
Why weren’t day 3 and 4 the other way around? Working out from the universe, in towards our planet and eventually us. I think it is because whilst our planet isn’t physically central to the universe, its purpose is central to it (to be habitable by us). The rest of the universe serves it, but only after “it” is made “planet like”.
If there was ambiguity about whether previous days were acting on a planetary or universal level, day three seems on the surface (no pun intended) to be describing “changes to the surface of our planet”. It uses the word “dry land” (or more often the word is translated to mean just “dry”) instead of earth.
This isn’t a “let there be” creation event, but a “let things already present be different” one, suggesting movement (gathering) of previously materialised (day 0), energised (day 1) and formed (day 2) matter. It should be noted that vegetation, though imbued with life giving and reproducing information, is made of types of matter present in rock and earth (think animal, mineral, vegetable). This of course is confirmed with modern science, but wasn’t an obvious determination when written. If this had been made up, it would have been far easier to be found in error by now, than we give it credit.
Water (and/or whatever else is represented by the word water) is being modified for a second day. In Day 2 whatever was represented additionally by “water” was pulled “apart” (waters from waters) into higher and lower (vertical axis) components. Now, whatever is being represented by “water” (in addition to simply water), is the watery stuff that is below, so the wet type (not steam or ice, if we’re being literal, but being literal is wise to avoid in Genesis).
It is the creation of oceans, seas and lakes, distinct from dry land.
Dangerously applying modern sciencey thought to this, we could suggest this is done now because of gravity and so this might also represent the inauguration of gravity. That would mean, if we have understood gravity correctly and it hasn’t changed in eons (again a dangerous assumption) that it is only now that planet earth is pulled into a sphere shape with great mass.
This is then, in terms we can apply in terms of today’s Laws of Physics, an input of energy and potential.
It’s not just gravity that separates water from land, other creational forces or influences, would presumably be needed to “filter” sediment out one way and liquid out another, and clump the solid bits together on the mantel of the earth. This is a deliberate, calculated, designed action of choice.
9 Then God said, “Let the waters pool below the sky into one place, and let the dry parts of planet earth come together and stick out”; and it was so. [Nat Amplified]
Day/Night/Evening/Morning (yôm / layil / Erev / Boker)
5 God called the light “day”, and the darkness He called “night”. And there was evening and there was morning, one day (or the first day).
But of course there isn’t a sun or a formed spinning planet yet. Well there maybe something of a planet, that’s constituting this matter being called earth, but certainly no Sun, that’s in a few days time. God named these things this, not Adam. So Adam in later adopting the words day, night, evening and morning, for what we now think of as them (daytime, nighttime and the transition states), was inferring some of the original meaning onto what we now have.
And there was evening and there was morning, one day (or the first day). Evening to morning isn't 24 hours, its just part of a full day, the night part. A day would be evening to evening, so this is imparting something else. Evening and morning, are also 2 early Hebrew words whose origin is just here.
Evening = Erev, Morning = Boker
We suspect these words mean what they normally mean. But note, these words aren’t used for the 7th day, so this is a clue.
Erev = Obscuration, mixture, increased entropy, when approaching darkness began to deny the ability to discern forms, shapes and identities, so it was used for twilight, the time of approaching darkness (Prov 7:9, Jer 6:4) and so it later went onto be used to mean “Evening”, but it’s original root meaning may have been something more fundamental. Erev was the beginning of the Hebrew day.
Boker = Becoming discernible, distinguishable, visible; perception of order; relief of obscurity (decreasing entropy); attendant ability to begin to discern forms shapes and distinct identities; breaking forth of light; revealing; hence dawn or morning.
Consider a scale going from Chaos to Order, nothing to maximum Energy, blank to lots of information, Cold to Hot, from there being nothing to their being lots of stuff. Each day was a ramping up, or step change on this scale.
Disorder to Order, Noise to Signal, Cacophony to Music, Chaos to Cosmos, Randomness to Design, Entropy to Information/Energy.
A “winding up” of the universe, adding incremental steps of additional energy, structure, order, clarity and information, each day culminating by day 6 with “nearly” (the Fall is yet to come) the physical sate of the universe as we see it, winding down nothing new is being added.
It’s worth considering also that, whether instantaneous, 24 hours, a thousand years or more, the “process” of creating time and matter, and subsequent creations steps, would in all likelihood, not leave typical aging traces having not been subject to the same scientific laws, as the process happened, because it was in itself creating those scientific laws. As consequence, our rock dating methods, uncertain as they already are, (note dating recently solidified magma throws up errors), may very well presume rock to be of a very different age than it might actually be.
The Hebrew words for Evening and Morning, likely later became associated with said times of day, but in their literal original, align closely with Evening, being darker, less clear and discernible and Morning, improving those matters.
'eḥāḏ yôm. One day. Yom means day 1181 times out of 1480. When there is a number associated it is always a literal, imparting exactness, what we would call, a 24 hour day. But, given how Erev and Boker came to mean, evening and morning, Yom/Day could have come to mean 24 hours.
We think we’re being very precise when we say 24 hours, but it’s not very exact. To be exact we should specify +/- how many nano seconds, the altitude or distance from the location we’re measuring time for (as this alters time), the speed we’re travelling at (as this alters time) and considering the big bang (for want of a better term) was a singularity warping everything, measuring “time” during such a singularity would surely throw up some odd looking timings; should we now look at the clock and assume it had just been reading since yesterday, not a time when the laws of physics were coming about, i.e “when” we measure 24 hours needs to be considered. In the middle of creation would surely throw the clock, and since the speed of light has been slowing exponentially since we started to measure it (even accounting for improving accuracy), even a measurement of “24 hours” from 6,500 years ago, is postulated would read as much longer, on today’s scale.
However, in Exodus 20:11 it says For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
Cleary God is content with us understanding that the days in Genesis were literal days, but it can be interpreted as longer without denying what the Bible says. Science is starting to realise the sense of them being literal modern days too (REF), but other science maintains creation looks to have taken longer (REF). Longer remains compatible with the Bible, unless this long time is needed to justify a belief in their having been a random process and/or process for creating new things, that requires pain and suffering.
And finally, at this point in the events, we've yet to get planet rotation that we consider to be a 24 hour period, so we must take Him at His word that his timing is accurate without planets spinning to check, and His intent for our understanding is reasonable, but that there is scope in the wording and the historical adoption/use of words, and variables that impact time measurement, for the days to have been longer periods of time.