Can you explain the day 1 and day 4 in Genesis where light is created?

Answer 1

The, "Let there be light" in verse 3 was to dispel the darkness of verse 2. It would have been a "pitch blackness", void of all light.

On day four the Lord created the sun for the day time and a lessor light for the night called the moon. These are with us even now.

Answer 2

In the first creation story in Genesis (there is also a different creation story that starts in verse 2:4b), God creates the light of day on day 1, but only creates the sun, moon and stars on day 4.

The sun was to rule the day, and the moon to rule the night. This is simply because the ancients did not realise that our daylight comes entirely from the sun. For them, the heavenly bodies ruled in their assigned skies, but were not our only source of light and warmth. That is also why plants could grow on day 3, even though the earth should have been a cold, dark and lifeless place.

The sun moon and stars were placed in the firmament, with the waters above, and their role was based on the needs of the earth. We now know differently. The sun and stars are immensely older than the earth and are not in a firmament just above the earth. And the earth is only one of many planets revolving around the sun and has no special priority in the cosmic sense.

To confirm the author's intentions, we can look at the Hebrew words used for 'create', since words can mean slightly different things in different contexts. He uses two synonyms, bārā (divine creation) and asah (make, create or form) almost interchangeably, but neither one is used in Genesis 1:3 - he simply says, "Let there be light," and there was light. The Hebrew verb asah is used to mean make or create, in Genesis 1:7 (firmament), 1:16 (two great lights), 1:25 (beasts of the earth) and 1:26 (man), so there is no doubt that the author was using the verb consistently to mean to make something new..

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Answer 3

The light of the first three days was not the sun or any star. Rather, it was light that God created before the sun, and which emanated from a point in space without any physical source; like what we might term a "white hole."

Answer 4

Day 1 of Genesis 1:1 says, 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,' and according to Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament, the term create is 'bara' in Hebrew and is applied only 'to a divine creation, the production of that which had no existence before.' So when God created the heavens they included the sun, moon, planets and stars. This is why there was light, day and night on the earth the first day.

Day 4 of Genesis 1:16 says, 'made two great lights to rule the day, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night.' The Hebrew for the word made is 'asah,' generally means to make or reconstitute something that already exists. So, now we can see that instead of God creating the sun, moon, planets and stars on the 4th day, it is more accurate to say He fixed these objects in their places and made them 'divide the day from the night' and set them 'for signs and seasons, and for days and years.'

The Expositor's Bible concurs with this explanation's saying that God commands the lights already in the expanse and that in response to his command they were given a purpose, 'to separate the day from the night' and 'to mark seasons and days and years.' In effect, God put all these objects in their proper orbits, thus setting the astronomical standards for the calendar and being able to measure the days, months and years.