The Strand Study Bible

GENESIS GENESIS When God divided the light from the darkness, He did so in order to give the human race the capacity to see color and to hear sound. God gave man eyes to see God’s promises (the r a i n b o w - Gen 9:13 ) and ears to hear God’s promises (the Bible). What an ingenious God to divide the light from the darkness, so that some of it strikes the eye and some of it strikes the ear. Light is nothing more than visible sound, thus sound is nothing more than audible light. If a ray of light speeding on any frequency and length of vibration that produces color ( Gen 1:30 ) can have that frequency altered and slowed down, it will lose its visibility, but will strike upon the ear as a high, clear sound. In fact, if our ears were tuned to receive them, we could hear a different tonal value to every “color” in the spectrum. What an amazing Creator. NOTE - Only a fool would deny the existence of a Supreme Being that created all that we see and hear (Rom 1:22 and Psa 14:1). 1:5 Until God divided the light from the darkness there was no day . There was an earth, but there was no day . And if there was no day , there was no “time,” for the division of light and darkness (time) established what a day was. Which means, the earth was in existence (sitting in eternity past) before the day (time – Eccl 3:1c ) was created. How long the earth was in existence before the day was created is anyone’s guess, but it was certainly long enough to include a “gap” ( Gen 1:1d & 1:2a,b,c and Exo 20:11 ). Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins in Are We Living in the End Times? note: The sixty-six books of the Bible are mostly about man’s existence in the period we call “time,” from Adam and Eve through the coming kingdom age of Jesus Christ. 26 NOTE - This word ( day ) is the Hebrew word yom and appears over 1,400 times in the OT. It is translated into no less than fifty- four different English words within our own Bible. If then, yom can be subject to fifty-four different meanings, how can we be so dogmatic as to demand a certain unwavering restriction to only one of those meanings? Rodney Whitefield in Reading Genesis One–Comparing Biblical Hebrew with English Translation cites R.A. Torrey ( The Fundamentals ) and notes: Good men’s opinions will vary on most things and the subject of the days of creation is no exception. Again, because no one was there (except God) when everything was created, two individual theories concerning how long the six days of creation were have developed: 1. The six days of creation were long periods of time R.A. Torrey quotes II Peter 3:8 as proof: But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day According to this view, the six days of creation could have lasted thousands of years. 2. The six days of creation were literal twenty-four hour solar days The word yom ( day ), when used in the Pentateuch with a numerical adjective, always refers to a literal twenty-four hour solar day. In Genesis 1 the word yom is used with a numerical adjective. 1:6a This word ( firmament ) is the Hebrew word “ rah-kee’ag .” It is a noun whose meaning comes from a verb that means “ to beat , stamp, and to spread out ” (speaking of the extensive expanse of fluid that hovers above us within our atmosphere). It appears that God suspended a vast reservoir of water in vapor form above the earth on the second day to protect the earth from the destructive rays of the sun. This would, of course, accomplish two things: long life on earth before the Flood ( Gen 8:22 ), and a water source for the Flood itself ( Gen 7:11b and Job 22:16 ). The second day in the Mosaic account of creation speaks volumes concerning CHRIST’S salvation . Whereas the first day of creation is all about the pre-existing light (depicting the pre-existing SAVIOR ), the second day is all about water (depicting the SAVIOR’S salvation). You can’t have water (salvation) until you first have light ( SAVIOR ). NOTE - According to John 4:10-14, water is a perfect picture of salvation. The reason the firmament came after the pre-existing light is because you can’t have salvation without a Savior. The Bible says that God created water four days before He created man. Then He divided the waters from the waters and called the waters above “firmament” and called the waters below “seas.” Just as God provided water four days before man was created and needed it, so God provided salvation 4,000 years before Jesus came and paid for it (Titus 1:2 and Rev 13:8). Like water, salvation was provided long before it was needed. 1:6b There are three reasons why God “divided the waters from the waters:” 1. To provide oxygen – Without the atmosphere (that space between the waters above and the waters below) there would be no oxygen. In fact, if these two bodies of water were not separated nothing could exist except fish. And then they too would soon perish because they would soon exhaust the supply of oxygen within the waters. The supply of oxygen essential for the support of life, whether animal or human, is in the atmosphere. Without that atmosphere, from which the sea’s supply of oxygen must constantly be replenished through rain, even fish would not be able to survive. What a resourceful God. 2. To provide observation – The reason God divided the waters from the waters is so that man might observe that he is totally surrounded by that which illustrates salvation so that when he looks down there’s water, when he looks around at the rain coming down there’s water, and when he looks up there’s water. God did all that He needed to do in order to illustrate to man that salvation is all around him for the viewing. The question is: If there’s more water above us than around us (and there is), why are we always looking around us for salvation instead of above us? Jesus said in John 8:23, “ Ye (mankind) are from beneath; I am from above : ye are of this world; I am not of this world . ” People need to stop looking at religious movements around them for their salvation and start looking up to the only ONE that came down from above in order to save us all. NOTE - Did you know that when you look up, you’re looking at more salvation than if you were looking down and around? 43 Anyone who is at all familiar with the Bible and the way the Bible uses words, knows that the use of the word “day” is not limited to twenty-four hours. It is frequently used to denote a period of entirely undefined length...There is no necessity whatsoever for intrepreting the days of Genesis 1 as solar days of twenty-four hours length. 27