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HOW SHOULD WE UNDERSTAND THE DAYS OF CREATION?
INTRODUCTION
Hermeneutical errors surrounding Genesis chapter one are now rampant and devastating across the
world! It is therefore essential to understand what this first chapter of Holy Scripture is really saying about
origins. Regarding the time span which God took in the unfolding of creation there have been many
convoluted debates. The facts, however, are utterly incontrovertible:
1. Each day or "yôm" in Genesis one is 24-hours because it’s bounded and defined by an evening and a
morning.
2. Each day is also modified by a number (cardinal or ordinal), reinforcing this truth.
3. God saw everything He made was "very good", which excludes enemies such as death (1 Cor. 15:26,
Rev. 20:14).
4. Nephesh creatures and humans ate vegetation alone - not meat, Gen. 1:29-30.
5. Exodus 20:11, 31:17-18, Proverbs 8:23: all delimit the creation period to six normal days with no gaps
in-between.
6. The Jesus AGE verses: Mark 10:6, Matthew 19:3-6, Luke 11:50-51 all indicate the cosmos began when
humans began. There is no other valid, logically consistent interpretation of these verses.
7. The Greek of Luke 1:70 - " since the world began" reinforces these verses.
8. The Greek of Romans 1:20 - "since the creation of the world..." also reinforces these verses.
8. Jude vs 14 relates that Enoch was the seventh from Adam, indicating the genealogies can be made an
exact chronology (and that is why they are given to us).
9. Nephesh (life) consumption is a physical evil (Isaiah 11:9 and 65:25) therefore cannot have occurred
pre-Fall.
10. The Biblical worldview and eschatology are wholly inconsistent with evolutionary deep time based
extrapolations of the future, which dogmatically predict our cosmos will continue for countless trillions of
years, eventually dying a heat death.
Since this clear and abundant testimony of Holy Scripture isn’t enough for some, who twist God’s word in
various disturbing ways and willfully ignore it in others based upon preconceived conclusions, let us briefly
survey their gross misconceptions:
THE GAP HYPOTHESIS
DESCRIPTION:

Developed by the Dutchman Episcopius (1583-1643) and adopted by Dr. Thomas Chalmers in
the early nineteenth century and also G.H. Pember in ‘ Earth’s Earliest Ages’ (1884), this
concordist theory attempts to insert a pre-Adamic gap, millions or billions of years long, between
the first two verses of Genesis one. Distorting the meaning of Genesis 1:28, Jeremiah 4:23,
Isaiah 34:11 and Isaiah 45:18, it argues that most of the fossils and rock layers are the remains
of a previous creation, ruled over by the angel Lucifer, which were either buried in ‘Lucifer’s
Flood’ or buried slowly over millions of years. Verses 3-31 of Genesis one are then said to
recount a reconstruction of the world in six days. This view was made highly popular through
inclusion in the footnotes of the Scofield Reference Bible of 1909.
ASSESSMENT:

This wholly speculative ‘exegesis of desperation’ is so absurd and full of problems that few people
now resort to it. For instance, the Hebrew does not allow a gap between the first two verses
(Gen. 1:1-1:2) nor does it permit the meaning required in Gen. 1:2. This verse is not a picture of
a fallen state, but rather has the sense of ‘a lack of full development’ and is clearly circumstantial
to verse 1. The same problem applies for the verses of the Major Prophets resorted to - this
compromise reads into the text (eisegesis) what is simply not there. In any case, it is absurd to
suggest that Scripture would neglect to mention such an enormous catastrophe when it mentions
in this context less important things. Moreover, God created everything in six days (Exodus
20:11), there was no death, disease or suffering before the Fall, and therefore by teaching
otherwise this theory undermines the gospel at its foundations. For more detailed and rigorous
rebuttals c.f. Kelly (2004:94-98), Kulikovsky (2009:108-109), and Fields (1997).
THE DAY-AGE HYPOTHESIS OR ‘PROGRESSIVE CREATION’
DESCRIPTION:

This is a concordist theory which argues the days of creation were vast ages. It posits a big bang
origin of the cosmos about 14 billion years ago, periods of great organic creative activity
separated by long periods of ‘horizontal micro-evolution’, pre-Adamic hominoids and a local flood.
Underlying all these teachings is the false assumption that natural revelation is of equal clarity and
perfection to the special revelation of Holy Scripture. Such notions were made popular by Bernard
Ramm (1963) in ‘The Christian View of Science and Scripture’ and more recently by Hugh Ross
(2004) in ‘A Matter of Days’.
ASSESSMENT:

The days of creation cannot be interpreted correctly as long periods of time. The Hebrew word for
day, or “yôm”, can be understood in numerous different ways depending upon its specific context.
In Genesis one, however, it is bounded and defined by an evening and a morning, akin to a
twenty-four hour solar period. This initial definition is required to resolve an ambiguity because the
word ‘day’ is used in two senses in the same verse (Gen. 1:5). Yet by the defintion, evening +
morning = one day. This is why the first day has a cardinal number associated (i.e. one day)
whereas the others have ordinal numbers and no definite article until the six day (i.e. ‘a’ is used
rather than ‘the’ - as in ‘a second day’, ‘a third day’ etc. … until finally ‘the sixth day’). This
usage indicates that the sixth day was special in that it culminated all that had come before.
Additionally, whenever ‘evening’ and ‘morning’ are used together in a context with ‘day’ (nineteen
times in the Holy Bible beyond the six uses in Genesis one), they are used consistently in
reference to literal days. Exodus 20:11 also makes it clear that these days were normal week
days (if the days were indeterminate periods of time then the Israelites could not have defined
their Sabbath rest as every 144-168 hours - rather than, say, every seventh hour of the day or
seventh month of the year). Just as Moses was told to make all the furnishings of the tabernacle
according to the pattern shown him on Mount Sinai, so the Israelites were to worship God
according to the precise time pattern He had revealed in the creation week. They had to keep the
Sabbath day after a recurrent period of 144 hours, upon pain of death. Hence there was no room
for ambiguity. Another problem with the Day-Age Theory is that it is impossible to square the
sequential order of creative events with the ‘evolutionary’ order. Note that in the long-age
evolutionary sequence: stars existed before earth (contrast Gen. 1:2 and 1:14), the sun was
earth’s first light (contrast Gen. 1:3 and 1:17), the sun predates vegetation (contrast Gen. 1:11
and 1:14), dry land predates oceans (constrast Gen. 1:9), the first self-replicating cells arose in
the ocean (contrast Gen. 1:11), moving marine vertebrates predate terrestrial vegetation (contrast
Gen. 1:11 and 1:21), insects predate flowering plants (contrast Gen. 1:11 and 1:25), terrestrial
insects predate flying insects (contrast Gen. 1:21 and 25), reptiles and dinosaurs predate birds
(contrast Gen. 1:20 and 1:24), terrestrial reptiles predate flying pterosaurs (contrast Gen. 1:20
and 1:24), dinosaurs predate marine mammals (contrast Gen. 1:21 and 1: 24), terrestrial
mammals predate both whales and bats (contrast Gen. 1:21 and 1:25) and disease/death/thorns
predate humanity (contrast Gen. 1:29-31 and 3:18). Furthermore, from a Reformed perspective,
natural revelation is to be interpreted according to (and in light of) the historical truth claims of
special revelation, rather than vice versa. And again, had the Cataclysm in Noah’s day been a
mere local upheaval of the limited geography Noah could see, flying organisms were wasted
cargo on the Ark (they could easily have migrated away from the storm!). Indeed, 2 Peter 3:5-13
specifically links the ‘earth’ of the Gen. 1:9-10 creation week with the same ‘earth’ that was
destroyed in Gen 9:11 - and also the same earth which will pass away by fire at the future Day of
Judgment! To avoid the obvious implication of a global flood in the days of Noah, one must also
be consistent and argue that the structured ‘dry earth’ of the creation week was only a local
region - and that Peter’s warning of a ‘general conflagration’ will only apply to a localized area of
planet earth. However such reasoning is impossible, for Peter was warning Christians scattered
across the entire Near Eastern world and beyond that the heavens and the earth will pass away
together. For more detailed and comprehensive refutation of this deeply pernicious error of
Progressive Creation c.f. Sarfati’s (2004) book ‘ Refuting Compromise’.
THE LITERARY FRAMEWORK HYPOTHESIS AND ‘FUNCTIONAL’ COSMIC TEMPLE CONCEPT
DESCRIPTION:

The Framework view affirms that the creation ‘week’ itself is a semi-poetic, figurative and
symmetric structure rather than sequential, historical narrative. This error was first developed by
Professor Arie Noordzij of the University of Utrecht in 1924 and subsequently promoted by the
theologians N.H. Ridderbos and Meredith G. Kline. Adherents to this interpretation insist that
certain literary clues point to the account being symbolical rather than literal. They think the
account is arranged topically rather than chronologically, viewing ordinary (present day)
providence as the manner in which God created and arguing for an unending seventh day. They
also suggest that the 6 + 1 pattern of Genesis one, common to Ancient Near Eastern texts,
means the author was using a stereotype from his cultural milieu. Getting under the surface, the
scheme is claimed to be of ‘six work-day frames’, with each day of divine work serving as an
artists ‘picture frame’. According to the Framework Hypothesis, each day of creation is introduced
by the phrase “and God said” (i.e. Gen. 1:3, 6, 9, 14, 20, 24) and on two of the days (3 and 6)
this phrase occurs twice (vs. 11 and 26) – resulting in a total of eight divine announcements. It is
via these eight uses that framework supporters assert that there are eight creative events. When
viewed as a whole, these eight events are believed to be divided symmetrically into two parallel
units of three days (entitled ‘Creation Kingdoms’ and ‘Creature Kings’ respectively), with day one
corresponding to day four, day two to five - and day three to six. The intent of these two parallel
units of three days is claimed to be for literary and theological purposes, such that the seventh
day Sabbath sits in juxtaposition after them all and provides a culmination point for the whole
figure centered upon God the enthroned ‘Creator King’. (This typological approach of Kline has
led Walton (2009) to echo older Jewish and Lutheran typological insights regarding the templesymbolism of the Garden of Eden and misinterpret them as a ‘functional’ rather than ‘material’
cosmic inauguration ceremony centered upon God’s Sabbath enthronement. This asserts that
Genesis one offers no mechanism for material origins and we must look to science to provide it –
hence biological evolution becomes less objectionable.
ASSESSMENT:

These profound misunderstandings of the creation account are highly dangerous because they
contain a complex admixture of some insightful truth and some error. Whilst being a detailed and
carefully constructed hypothesis, the Framework view is actually incorrect because it overlooks a
number of very important facts.
First, Genesis one presents not just eight, but as we have seen, a Trinitarian pattern of precisely nine
‘and God said’ phrases (vs. 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26 and 29). There really are exactly nine
identical ‘and God said’ phrases in the Hebrew of Gen. 1:3-31 (and a counting error either way can
result in hermeneutical calamity – so we have to be precise).
Second, the Hebrew is not that of poetry but that of historical narrative (which incorporates the waw
consecutive 55 times – a grammatical form regularly used with a preterite (i.e. an action or state in
the past tense) for sequential, narrative literature). Third, the simple ‘Kingdom-Kings’ or ‘Sphere-Ruler’
parallels claimed in this hypothesis are not actually present upon close examination. Light is not the
kingdom or sphere of the light-bearers. The light-bearers of the fourth day are placed in the expansion
of heaven (1:14, 17). The expansion, however, was made on the second day (1:6, 7), not on day
one. Therefore light-bearers cannot be said to embellish or glorify their parallel ‘kingdom’ because it
wasn’t even formed on day one. Again, on the fifth day flying creatures are to fly over the earth
‘across the face of the expansion’ of heaven. They don’t fly in the expansion (which is actually outer
space, where the stars were set). Instead they fly across the face of it in the atmosphere or sky made
on day three (when God set a compass upon the face of the depth – c.f. Proverbs 8:23-31). Thus
the supposed parallel again breaks down. The same applies for the swimming creatures (which have
nephesh life) on day five. Their kingdom is the seas, yet the seas were not created until the beginning
of the third day - when a spherical planet was formed. The kingdom of day five, it must be
recognized, does not refer to the undifferentiated ‘deep’ (Hebrew: t-hom) of days one and two
(without gravitation), but to the structured hydro-spherical oceans which came afterwards (with
gravitation).
Finally, although the organisms of day six might seem to parallel the kingdom of dry land made on day
three, this is not actually the case. The organisms of day six may be defined as those which are
designed for a solid, unyielding fulcrum under their feet or bodies (as opposed to those of day five
which are designed to move through yielding, incompressible and compressible fluids respectively, and
those of day three which are designed entirely sessile). Those organisms of day six would therefore
include marine dwelling crustaceans etc. which move across the solid ocean floor on legs/feet. As for
human beings, their ‘kingdom’ is the whole earth – including the seas. Thus again we find that the
Framework Hypothesis wholly fails to explain the true structure of Genesis one. (For more see:
McCabe in: Mortenson and Ury (2008:211-249).
A related interpretation which also fails is the unnecessary dichotomy between ‘functional’ and
‘material’ creation (supposedly derived from Ancient Near Eastern texts). John Walton (2009) argues
in his book ‘The Lost World of Genesis One’ that God is using an already pre-existing cosmos in
order to bring into the world purpose, order and meaning. This purpose, Walton insists, is the
inauguration of a ‘cosmic temple’ for God’s rule. This latter argument is not wholly original – stemming
as it does from Davidson’s book ‘Typology in Scripture’ (1981) and Jordan’s book on typology and
worldview: ‘Through New Eyes’ (1988). Regarding the former notion, however (of functional rather
than material origins), this view has been thoroughly critiqued by Statham (2010:24-26) who notes:
“…in Col. 1:16, Christ is said to have created all “things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible”.
Moreover, Walton’s rejection of Genesis 1 as an account of material origins hardly fits the statement of
Gen. 2:2-3, which makes clear that, after Day 6, God ceased from work. If God had not created
anything material, but simply proclaimed the functions of that which already existed, what work had he
done? … It is difficult to accept the idea that the vast majority of Christian and Jewish scholars have
been wrong about the Bible’s account of creation for so many centuries.” Perhaps the real reason
Walton adopts such a novel position seems to be because he needs to accommodate evolutionary
theory at any cost.
Thus with these three views critiqued our brief refutation of hermeneutical errors is complete. We could
have looked at far more numerous examples of false exegesis including ‘The Limited Geography’
hypothesis and the ‘Anthropomorphic Days’ hypothesis etc. however these views are not as widespread.
REFERENCES
Fields, W.W. (1976). Unformed and Unfilled: The Gap Theory. USA: Baker Book House.
Jordan, J.B. (1988). Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World . USA: Wolgemuth and
Hyatt, Publishers
Kelly, D. (2004). Creation and Change: Genesis 1.1-2.4 in the light of changing scientific paradigms.
Ross-shire, Scotland: (Mentor) Christian Focus Publications.
Kulikovsky, A.S. (2009). Creation, Fall, Restoration: A Biblical Theology of Creation . Ross-shire, Scotland:
Christian Focus Publications.
McCabe, R.V. in: Mortenson, T. and Ury, T.H. (eds.) (2008). Coming to Grips with Genesis: Biblical
Authority and the Age of the Earth. USA: New Leaf Publishing.
Pember, G.H. (1876 republished 1975). Earth’s Earliest Ages. USA: Kregel Academic.
Ramm, B. (1963). The Christian View of Science and Scripture . USA: Eerdmans.
Sarfati, J. (2004). Refuting Compromise: A Biblical and Scientific Refutation of “Progressive Creationism ”….
USA: Master Books.
Statham, D. (2010). Dubious and dangerous exposition. Journal of Creation 24(3). Australia: Creation
Ministries International.
Ross, H. (2004). A Matter of Days: Resolving a Creation Controversy. USA: Navpress Publications.
Walton, J.H. (2009). The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate . USA:
Intervarsity Press USA.