Genesis 1:4-14

1:4 God saw ¹  that the light was good, ²  so God separated ³  the light from the darkness. 1:5 God called ⁴  the light “day” and the darkness ⁵  “night.” There was evening, and there was morning, marking the first day. ⁶ 

1:6 God said, “Let there be an expanse ⁷  in the midst of the waters and let it separate water ⁸  from water. 1:7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. ⁹  It was so. ¹⁰  1:8 God called the expanse “sky.” ¹¹  There was evening, and there was morning, a second day.

1:9 God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place ¹²  and let dry ground appear.” ¹³  It was so. 1:10 God called the dry ground “land” ¹⁴  and the gathered waters he called “seas.” God saw that it was good.

1:11 God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: ¹⁵  plants yielding seeds according to their kinds, ¹⁶  and ¹⁷  trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds.” It was so. 1:12 The land produced vegetation – plants yielding seeds according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. God saw that it was good. 1:13 There was evening, and there was morning, a third day.

1:14 God said, “Let there be lights ¹⁸  in the expanse ¹⁹  of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them be signs ²⁰  to indicate seasons and days and years,

[1:4]  ¹ tn Heb “And God saw the light, that it was good.” The verb “saw” in this passage carries the meaning “reflected on,” “surveyed,” “concluded,” “noted.” It is a description of reflection of the mind – it is God’s opinion.

[1:4]  ² tn The Hebrew word טוֹב (tov) in this context signifies whatever enhances, promotes, produces, or is conducive for life. It is the light that God considers “good,” not the darkness. Whatever is conducive to life in God’s creation is good, for God himself is good, and that goodness is reflected in all of his works.

[1:4]  ³ tn The verb “separate, divide” here explains how God used the light to dispel the darkness. It did not do away with the darkness completely, but made a separation. The light came alongside the darkness, but they are mutually exclusive – a theme that will be developed in the Gospel of John (cf. John 1:5).

[1:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “he called to,” meaning “he named.”

[1:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “and the darkness he called night.” The words “he called” have not been repeated in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[1:5]  ⁶ tn Another option is to translate, “Evening came, and then morning came.” This formula closes the six days of creation. It seems to follow the Jewish order of reckoning time: from evening to morning. Day one started with the dark, continued through the creation of light, and ended with nightfall. Another alternative would be to translate, “There was night and then there was day, one day.”

[1:6]  ⁷ tn The Hebrew word refers to an expanse of air pressure between the surface of the sea and the clouds, separating water below from water above. In v. 8 it is called “sky.”

[1:6]  ⁸ tn Heb “the waters from the waters.”

[1:7]  ⁹ tn Heb “the expanse.”

[1:7]  ¹⁰ tn This statement indicates that it happened the way God designed it, underscoring the connection between word and event.

[1:8]  ¹¹ tn Though the Hebrew word can mean “heaven,” it refers in this context to “the sky.”

[1:9]  ¹² sn Let the water…be gathered to one place. In the beginning the water covered the whole earth; now the water was to be restricted to an area to form the ocean. The picture is one of the dry land as an island with the sea surrounding it. Again the sovereignty of God is revealed. Whereas the pagans saw the sea as a force to be reckoned with, God controls the boundaries of the sea. And in the judgment at the flood he will blur the boundaries so that chaos returns.

[1:9]  ¹³ tn When the waters are collected to one place, dry land emerges above the surface of the receding water.

[1:10]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “earth,” but here the term refers to the dry ground as opposed to the sea.

[1:11]  ¹⁵ tn The Hebrew construction employs a cognate accusative, where the nominal object (“vegetation”) derives from the verbal root employed. It stresses the abundant productivity that God created.

[1:11]  ¹⁶ sn After their kinds. The Hebrew word translated “kind” (מִין, min) indicates again that God was concerned with defining and dividing time, space, and species. The point is that creation was with order, as opposed to chaos. And what God created and distinguished with boundaries was not to be confused (see Lev 19:19 and Deut 22:9-11).

[1:11]  ¹⁷ tn The conjunction “and” is not in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied in the translation to clarify the relationship of the clauses.

[1:14]  ¹⁸ sn Let there be lights. Light itself was created before the light-bearers. The order would not seem strange to the ancient Hebrew mind that did not automatically link daylight with the sun (note that dawn and dusk appear to have light without the sun).

[1:14]  ¹⁹ tn The language describing the cosmos, which reflects a prescientific view of the world, must be interpreted as phenomenal, describing what appears to be the case. The sun and the moon are not in the sky (below the clouds), but from the viewpoint of a person standing on the earth, they appear that way. Even today we use similar phenomenological expressions, such as “the sun is rising” or “the stars in the sky.”

[1:14]  ²⁰ tn The text has “for signs and for seasons and for days and years.” It seems likely from the meanings of the words involved that “signs” is the main idea, followed by two categories, “seasons” and “days and years.” This is the simplest explanation, and one that matches vv. 11-13. It could even be rendered “signs for the fixed seasons, that is [explicative vav (ו)] days and years.”