I’m sharing this because it’s good enough for a devo. I was texted a Bible question last week and this was my response.
The question was…
Should the account of seven-day creation be read using figurative language approach (meaning that it wasn’t a literal seven days of creation, that is was more of seven extended time periods) or straight-up as seven literal days of creation? I’ve always believed the latter, but I’m curious as to what other people have thought.
My answer was…
Alright, I could have responded earlier but Arkansas was hammering Kentucky and there are fewer things I enjoy watching more than I do watching Arkansas beat Kentucky in basketball.
Did God make the world in six days? Yes. For multiple reasons.
1. Moses said so. There’s nothing in the text to imply “day” means anything other than “day.” The running refrain of the creation account is “the evening and the morning were the first day.” An evening and a morning is a day, not an eon. The people who try to argue “well the word day could mean eon” are right in a vacuum, but vacuums suck and so does that argument. Moses defines the word in the context: an evening and a morning. The people reading Moses’ words (the nation of Israel) would never have thought the word meant anything other than a day. That’s the clear and obvious meaning and you would need help to see it otherwise.
2. Setting aside argument 1, which (in my opinion) is irrefutable, consider this: How long did Adam live? 900 something years. If a day in the creation account was an eon of time, and Adam was made on the sixth day, how did he live to see the seventh day? When did a day stop meaning an eon? I’ve yet to hear a solid answer for when a “day” stopped being an “eon” and started being a “day.” The idea doesn’t hold water based on everything else that happens in Genesis 1-2.
3. The seventh day was a day of rest. The six-day creation, followed by a seventh day of rest, became the template for the Jewish work week (work for six, rest on the seventh). The entire template falls apart if the days aren’t days. Furthermore, the seven-day cycle being created in the beginning is important because it’s a purely arbitrary idea. Think about it: We measure days by the rising and setting of the sun. We measure months by the cycle of the moon. How do we measure weeks? What is a week? It’s a thing God created by resting on the last day of the week, making the “eighth” day the “first day of the week,” starting the “weekly cycle” over. That whole thing falls apart if the days aren’t days.
Let me know if you have any questions. Love you brother.
Looking back, I see now that I didn’t exactly answer the second part of the question, which was “what other people have thought.” In short, some (though not all) people try to argue the days were eons because they doubt the Word of God (which says six), they doubt the power of God (to do it in six), or they doubt the imagination of God (to create a young earth that looks old, much like He created a newly made Adam who looked not like a baby, or a newly made tree that wasn’t just a sapling, etc).
Six days is six days.
Let me know if you have any questions. Love you, church.
~ Matthew