An Indepth Bible Study In The Book Of Genesis.

I would like to present, when it seems to me appropriate, some of the discussions of Augustine regarding Genesis. I have found many of the questions he relates thought provoking. His discussions, also can be enlightening, although I am often unable to locate his proposed answers (although it is sometimes apparent in his context). It is also sometimes obscure which scriptures he references, which is partially due to the fact that his time was before canonization, and partially because of the different translation paths.

And how did God say, Let there be light? Was this in time or in the eternity of His Word? If this was spoken in time, it was certainly subject to change." How then could we conceive of God saying it except by means of a creature? For He Himself is unchangeable.
John Hammond Taylor;Augustine. St. Augustine: The Literal Meaning of Genesis: 001 (Ancient Christian Writers) (Kindle Locations 219-221). Kindle Edition.

Later Augustine, writing before light was scientifically defined writes:

What is the light itself which was created? Is it something spiritual or material? If it is spiritual, it may be the first work of creation, now made perfect by this utterance, and previously called heaven in the words, In the beginning God created heaven and earth. In this supposition, we must understand that when God said, Let there be light, and light was made, the creature, called by its Creator to Himself, underwent a conversion and illumination.
John Hammond Taylor;Augustine. St. Augustine: The Literal Meaning of Genesis: 001 (Ancient Christian Writers) (Kindle Locations 238-240). Kindle Edition.

As I indicated above, Augustine was writing before the science of light had begun... But the same is true of the writing of Genesis 1, so it may be instructive to consider it in that light.

So, I will leave it up to my brothers here... Do you find these kinds of questions thought provoking, or is this a distraction? I will not take offense either way.
I like it. My wife likes Augustine too! I've not yet delved into his writings yet. However, I have thought a lot about the light of Genesis. Light by definition contains but a fraction of what we call visible light. In fact, the proper use of the word would be energy. I see that God created the parts atoms, like "legos" (for a lack of better easy-to-understand form), strewn on a table, or in this case something called "time". Darkness... no energy. Then the Holy Spirit brooded (the actual Hebrew meaning of the word moved). He moved upon the face of the waters - you can't breathe underwater and you can't breathe in space. Water is just "H2O" atoms... which are the first and third most abundant atoms in the universe (I know it's not exact, but this is just an attempt to understand the narrative given with what we know today). To brood is to flutter, to move, to make change, and the Holy Spirit cause the energy to exist getting the subatomic parts to come to be what they are and created atoms. And then God said "Let there be light" as energy. This energy created everything until the 4th day when the Sun, visible light was made. The biggest "thing" created was what scientists call "dark energy"! It really is all written in the word of God! It's interesting that the terms "Day" and "Night" were coined right then and there without the sun and moon and stars! Today, we see things in the heavens (day) and yet we see the effects of something unseen we call dark matter (night)! See how accurate the word of God is when it took almost 6000 years to even realized the "night" existed without being able to "see" it! God is so loving and so awesome to have spelled it all out for us, learning about it is just a blessing! Well, off to bed. :D
 
As MacArthur says in the video, Christ created fish and bread out of nothing and fed the people. In the OT, manna falls from the heavens for 40 years....6 days a week for 40 years. Only manna qualifies as completely new tho, I suppose. Or not new because angels ate/eat it? (Oh no, manna AGAIN? I want meatloaf....hehehehe).

Right. Manna, I hadn't thought of that, thank you.
 
Thank you everyone for kicking off this Bible Study. Your comments were much appreciated. Lets continue with Verse two, if all are ready.

Genesis 1:2 "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." (ESV)
Genesis 1:2 "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." (KJV)
Genesis 1:2 And the earthH776 wasH1961 without form,H8414 and void;H922 and darknessH2822 was uponH5921 the faceH6440 of the deep.H8415 And the SpiritH7307 of GodH430 movedH7363 uponH5921 the faceH6440 of the waters.H4325 (KJV+ Strongs Numbers) Provided by e-Sword.net by permission.

I will comment on Verse Two later as I have to go.
 
The following is from "The Pulpit Commentary" (Provided by e-Sword by permission)

Gen_1:2
"And the earth. Clearly the earth referred to in the preceding verse, the present terrestrial globe with its atmospheric firmament, and not simply "the land" as opposed to "the skies" (Murphy); certainly not "the heavens" of Gen_1:1 as well as the earth (Delitzsch); and least of all "a section of the dry land in Central Asia" (Buckland, Pye Smith). It is a sound principle of exegesis that a word shall retain the meaning it at first possesses till either intimation is made by the writer of a change in its significance, or such change is imperatively demanded by the necessities of the context, neither of which is the case here. Was. Not "had become." Without form and void. Literally, wasteness and emptiness, tohu vabohu. The words are employed in Isa_34:11 and Jer_4:23 to depict the desolation and desertion of a ruined and depopulated land, and by many have been pressed into service to support the idea of a preceding cosmos, of which the chaotic condition of our planet was the wreck (Murphy, Wordsworth, Bush, &c). Delitzsch argues, on the ground that tohu vabohu implies the ruin of a previous cosmos, that Jer_4:2 does not state specifically that God created the earth in this desolate and waste condition; and that death, which is inconceivable out of connection with sin, was in the world prior to the fall; that Jer_4:2 presupposes the fall of the angels, and adduces in support of his view Job_38:4-7—a notion which Kalisch contemptuously classes among "the aberrations of profound minds," and "the endless reveries" of "far-sighted thinkers." Bush is confident that Isa_45:18, in which Jehovah declares that he created not the earth tohu, is conclusive against a primeval chaos. The parallel clause, however, shows that not the original state, but the ultimate design of the globe, was contemplated in Jehovah’s language: "He created it not tohu, he formed it to be inhabited;" i.e. the Creator did not intend the earth to be a desolate region, but an inhabited planet. There can scarcely be a doubt, then, that the expression portrays the condition in which the new-created earth was, not innumerable ages, but very shortly, after it was summoned into existence. It was formless and lifeless; a huge, shapeless, objectless, tenantless mass of matter, the gaseous and solid elements commingled, in which neither organized structure, nor animated form, nor even distinctly-traced outline of any kind appeared. And darkness (was) upon the face of the deep. The "deep," from a root signifying to disturb, is frequently applied to the sea (Psa_42:8), and here probably intimates that the primordial matter of our globe existed in a fluid, or liquid, or molten form. Dawson distinguishes between "the deep" and the "waters," making the latter refer to the liquid condition of the globe, and the former apply to "the atmospheric waters," i.e. the vaporous or aeriform mass mantling the surface of our nascent planet, and containing the materials out of which the atmosphere was afterwards elaborated. As yet the whole was shrouded in the thick folds of Cimmerian gloom, giving not the slightest promise of that fair world of light, order, and life into which it was about to be transformed. Only one spark of hope might have been detected in the circumstance that the Spirit of God moved (literally, brooding) upon the face of the waters. That the Ruach Elohim, or breath of God, was not "a great wind," or "a wind of God," is determined by the non-existence of the air at this particular stage in the earth’s development. In accordance with Biblical usage generally, it must be regarded as a designation not simply "of the Divine power, which, like the wind and the breath, cannot be perceived" (Gesenius), but of the Holy Spirit, who is uniformly represented as the source or formative cause of all life and order in the world, whether physical, intellectual, or spiritual (of. Job_26:13; Job_27:3; Psa_33:6; Psa_104:29; Psa_143:10; Isa_34:16; Isa_61:1; Isa_63:11). As it were, the mention of the Ruach Elohim is the first out-blossoming of the latent fullness of the Divine personality, the initial movement in that sublime revelation of the nature of the Godhead, which, advancing slowly, and at the best but indistinctly, throughout Old Testament times, culminated in the clear and ample disclosures of the gospel The special form of this Divine agent’s activity is described as that of" brooding’’ (merachepheth, from raehaph, to be tremulous, as with love; hence, in Piel, to cherish young—Deu_32:11) or fluttering over the liquid elements of the shapeless and tenantless globe, communicating to them, doubtless, those formative powers of life and order which were to burst forth into operation in answer to the six words of the six ensuing days. As might have been anticipated, traces of this primeval chaos are to be detected in various heathen cosmogonies, as the following brief extracts will show."

John Gill is one of my favorite expositors of Scripture. Here is what he has to say about Verse two.
Genesis 1:2
And the earth was without form, and void,.... It was not in the form it now is, otherwise it must have a form, as all matter has; it was a fluid matter, the watery parts were not separated from the earthy ones; it was not put into the form of a terraqueous globe it is now, the sea apart, and the earth by itself, but were mixed and blended together; it was, as both the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem paraphrase it, a waste and desert, empty and destitute of both men and beasts; and it may be added, of fishes and fowls, and also of trees, herbs, and plants. It was, as Ovid (k) calls it, a chaos and an indigested mass of matter; and Hesiod (l) makes a chaos first to exist, and then the wide extended earth, and so Orpheus (m), and others; and this is agreeably to the notion of various nations. The Chinese make a chaos to be the beginning of all things, out of which the immaterial being (God) made all things that consist of matter, which they distinguish into parts they call Yin and Yang, the one signifying hidden or imperfect, the other open or perfect (n): and so the Egyptians, according to Diodorus Siculus (o), whose opinion he is supposed to give, thought the system of the universe had but one form; the heaven and earth, and the nature of them, being mixed and blended together, until by degrees they separated and obtained the form they now have: and the Phoenicians, as Sanchoniatho (p) relates, supposed the principle of the universe to be a dark and windy air, or the blast of a dark air, and a turbid chaos surrounded with darkness, as follows,

and darkness was upon the face of the deep: the whole fluid mass of earth and water mixed together. This abyss is explained by waters in the next clause, which seem to be uppermost; and this was all a dark turbid chaos, as before expressed, without any light or motion, till an agitation was made by the Spirit, as is next observed:

and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, which covered the earth, Psa_104:6 the earthy particles being heaviest sunk lower, and the waters being lighter rose up above the others: hence Thales (q) the philosopher makes water to be the beginning of all things, as do the Indian Brahmans (r): and Aristotle (s) himself owns that this was the most ancient opinion concerning the origin of the universe, and observes, that it was not only the opinion of Thales, but of those that were the most remote from the then present generation in which he lived, and of those that first wrote on divine things; and it is frequent in Hesiod and Homer to make Oceanus, or the ocean, with Tethys, to be the parents of generation: and so the Scriptures represent the original earth as standing out of the water, and consisting of it, 2Pe_3:5 and upon the surface of these waters, before they were drained off the earth, "the Spirit of God moved"; which is to be understood not of a wind, as Onkelos, Aben Ezra, and many Jewish writers, as well as Christians, interpret it; since the air, which the wind is a motion of, was not made until the second day. The Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem call it the spirit of mercies; and by it is meant the Spirit of the Messiah, as many Jewish writers (t) call him; that is, the third Person in the blessed Trinity, who was concerned in the creation of all things, as in the garnishing of the heavens, so in bringing the confused matter of the earth and water into form and order; see Job_26:13. This same Spirit "moved" or brooded (u) upon the face of the waters, to impregnate them, as an hen upon eggs to hatch them, so he to separate the parts which were mixed together, and give them a quickening virtue to produce living creatures in them.

There are those who fancy a gap between Verse one and Verse two. I do not hold to that theory because , in my mind, if God wanted me to be captured in my mind about it's possibilities, He would have mentioned it. Since a gap theory is without biblical evidence, so am I.
 
I don't see a gap...what's that about? I always gathered that the "heavens" was the sky and outer space and the earth was this planet. I say this because where God was (heaven) is eternal, right?
 
Here is how I see it. At the start of verse 2, earth and the heavens have been created, but earth as described in verse two was not the final product. Like a sculptor starting an sculpture of a person, after one hour of work, you may approach him and say "what are you creating", he will say "a woman holding a vase". And you walk away thinking there is something wrong with this person as you cannot fit what he said to what he has made thus far. It would be a foolish, he is not yet done.
So earth was there, but still unfinished. From verse two one can see that at this stage, earth was a watery mass. So the heavens and water were the first things created by God. All clothed in darkness, and heavens at this point seems void only, except for His presence.
Now the part of the Spirit of God hovering over this mass can mean different things. It can mean He was inspecting the creation thus far to for example be able to determine best way forward, like a sculptor would, or simply a prelude of what happens next in verse three.
I also do not see any significance to a gap between v1 and v2, as it would not matter, because God is God, only He determine His ways.
But I think someone already mentioned it, verse three brings an interesting element to the fore.
 
I don't see a gap...what's that about? I always gathered that the "heavens" was the sky and outer space and the earth was this planet. I say this because where God was (heaven) is eternal, right?

Silk, my good friend. It is not my purpose, ever, to teach or comment on the whims of man's imagination. Having said that, there is a theory of man that between Gen. 1 and Gen. 2 there was a previous creation by God that His creations ruined. Therefore God destroyed it, thus the chaos and emptiness, and God created a new creation. This is what is called a "gap theory".

That's all I want said on this error. If God wanted us to know about this, He would have told us. He is silent and so will I be.
 
This video is by a guy who is an American with an M.A. in Biblical Hebrew and Greek, and he said that verses 2 is simply parentheses of the narrative. Here's a great explanation via the Hebrew of Creation:

 
Are we to believe that God after creating the Heavens, and the earth in verse one, and then as the Lord was strolling through the universe came upon a planet without form and void, and then decided to create another the earth out of it?
 
This video is by a guy who is an American with an M.A. in Biblical Hebrew and Greek, and he said that verses 2 is simply parentheses of the narrative. Here's a great explanation via the Hebrew of Creation:


Great video, I like Hamp (in what videos I have seen). That is pretty much how I saw it before, altho, not as articulately and with the Hebrew. God created everything and then He starts fashioning the materials of the planet. I liked particularly how Hamp distinguishes "create" or bara and asa. Only God creates out of nothing.
 
This video is by a guy who is an American with an M.A. in Biblical Hebrew and Greek, and he said that verses 2 is simply parentheses of the narrative. Here's a great explanation via the Hebrew of Creation:


Thank you very much for the video. It was a little hard to follow him but listening very closely, he makes a lot of sense.
 
Thanks all... from his appearance, it might have been one of his very early videos and hadn't honed his speaking skills.
 
May 2nd 2015 Genesis 1:3-5 Light For Day One.

Genesis 1:3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 1:4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 1:5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Simply put, God displays His creative abilities. There was darkness on the face of the deep. For me, light is a gift of God. Light hides things that should not be seen, like evil that Scripture speaks about. I have heard people say, it's not safe to walk the streets at night. Not so in the light of day. There are many advantages to light and it's no wonder that God said that it was good.

Now let me see, at this period of time God had not created the sun. Where did the light come from? Some have said that God Himself is the light. Rev 22:5 "And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever."

Others have wondered if before God began to create the earth if there was light somewhere else? I guess that could be true. I'm of the mind that God likes light and shuns darkness. Therefore, where ever He was, must have been light until He approached the area in the universe where He wanted earth.

In the order of created days, we start with night (darkness). "And there was evening and there was morning, the first day." So our days started with the light of day. then night, the first day of creation....Just some thoughts.
 
"And let there be light".....I'm probably wrong (?) but perhaps it means that God created the perception (of the physical world) to be able to see His light? When I was 22 (thereabouts), I had spent the night cramming for a final and after the test, I went to my fiance's apartment to get some sleep. He was typing a report in the kitchen. As I was settling on his bed, to sleep, I noticed something happening in the corner of the room. It was like a growing whirlwind of stained glass light. I had spent a semester in art school, making recipes of color fragments, so I knew color. But there were known and unknown colors cascading. I 'heard" I Am....I finished shocked, God......And I was filled with indescribable bliss/joy/love. I had to tell someone. I flew down the hall to the kitchen, and collecting myself, I was watching my fiance type a sentence, when I realized the perspective was wrong....that I was floating above him. As soon as I thought that, like a rubber band released, I flew back to the bed. I never lost consciousness during all of this. Now, I went running down the hall, shouting the sentence he'd been typing. And so I had a witness to my out of body experience. And that's what I thought for 20+ years. That the out of body was real...and my vision of God was a dream. After that experience, my favorite color was teal (the color I post with) because I remember most it's vibrancy. Perhaps, off the topic, a bit, and for that I apologize, but I can't help thinking that the image of God breathed into us is about that kinda light.
 
"And let there be light".....I'm probably wrong (?) but perhaps it means that God created the perception (of the physical world) to be able to see His light? When I was 22 (thereabouts), I had spent the night cramming for a final and after the test, I went to my fiance's apartment to get some sleep. He was typing a report in the kitchen. As I was settling on his bed, to sleep, I noticed something happening in the corner of the room. It was like a growing whirlwind of stained glass light. I had spent a semester in art school, making recipes of color fragments, so I knew color. But there were known and unknown colors cascading. I 'heard" I Am....I finished shocked, God......And I was filled with indescribable bliss/joy/love. I had to tell someone. I flew down the hall to the kitchen, and collecting myself, I was watching my fiance type a sentence, when I realized the perspective was wrong....that I was floating above him. As soon as I thought that, like a rubber band released, I flew back to the bed. I never lost consciousness during all of this. Now, I went running down the hall, shouting the sentence he'd been typing. And so I had a witness to my out of body experience. And that's what I thought for 20+ years. That the out of body was real...and my vision of God was a dream. After that experience, my favorite color was teal (the color I post with) because I remember most it's vibrancy. Perhaps, off the topic, a bit, and for that I apologize, but I can't help thinking that the image of God breathed into us is about that kinda light.

I like that experience in the Spiritual realm Silk. I have come to believe that only God's favored followers are allowed into that unusual realm where God reveals Himself in many different ways to let you know that He is with you, and reveals something about Himself.
 
For those of you who enjoy a lot of information on a subject and in depth information on a subject, I present the writings of Albert Barnes....
The First Day
3. אמר 'āmar, “say, bid.” After this verb comes the thing said in the words of the speaker, or an equivalent expression. In this respect it corresponds with our English “say.”
אור 'ôr, “light.” Light is simply what makes a sensible impression on the organs of vision. It belongs to a class of things which occasionally produce the same effect.
ויאמר vayo'mer “then said.” "Here we have come to the narrative or the record of a series of events. The conjunction is prefixed to the verb, to indicate the connection of the event it records with what precedes. There is here, therefore, a sequence in the order of time. In a chain of events, the narrative follows the order of occurrence. Collateral chains of events must of necessity be recorded in successive paragraphs. The first paragraph carries on one line of incidents to a fit resting-place. The next may go back to take up the record of another line. Hence, a new paragraph beginning with a conjoined verb is to be connected in time, not with the last sentence of the preceding one, but with some sentence in the preceding narrative more or less distant from its terminating point (see on Gen_1:5, and Gen_2:3). Even a single verse may be a paragraph in itself referring to a point of time antecedent to the preceding sentence.
A verb so conjoined in narrative is in Hebrew put in the incipient or imperfect form, as the narrator conceives the events to grow each out of that already past. He himself follows the incidents step by step down the pathway of time, and hence the initial aspect of each event is toward him, as it actually comes upon the stage of existence.
Since the event now before us belongs to past time, this verb is well enough rendered by the past tense of our English verb. This tense in English is at present indefinite, as it does not determine the state of the event as either beginning, continuing, or concluded. It is not improbable, however, that it originally designated the first of these states, and came by degrees to be indefinite. The English present also may have denoted an incipient, and then an imperfect or indefinite.
3. ראה rā'âh, “see” ὁράω horaō, אור 'ôr, “emit light,” ראה rā'âh, “see by light.”
טיב ṭôb, “good.” Opposite is: רע rā‛.
4. קרא qārā', “cry, call.”
ערב ‛ereb, “evening, sunset.” A space of time before and after sunset. ערבים ‛arebayı̂m, “two evenings,” a certain time before sunset, and the time between sunset and the end of twilight. הערבים בין bēyn hā‛arbayı̂m “the interval between the two evenings, from sunset to the end of twilight,” according to the Karaites and Samaritans; “from sun declining to sunset,” according to the Pharisees and Rabbinists. It might be the time from the beginning of the one to the beginning of the other, from the end of the one to the end of the other, or from the beginning of the one to the end of the other. The last is the most suitable for all the passages in which it occurs. These are ten in number, all in the law Exo_12:6; Exo_16:12; Exo_29:31, Exo_29:41; Exo_30:8; Lev_23:5; Num_9:3, Num_9:5,Num_9:8; Num_28:4. The slaying of the evening lamb and of the passover lamb, the eating of the latter and the lighting of the lamps, took place in the interval so designated.
At the end of this portion of the sacred text we have the first פ (p). This is explained in the Introduction, Section VII.
The first day’s work is the calling of light into being. Here the design is evidently to remove one of the defects mentioned in the preceding verse, - “and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” The scene of this creative act is therefore coincident with that of the darkness it is intended to displace. The interference of supernatural power to cause the presence of light in this region, intimates that the powers of nature were inadequate to this effect. But it does not determine whether or not light had already existed elsewhere, and had even at one time penetrated into this now darkened region, and was still prevailing in the other realms of space beyond the face of the deep. Nor does it determine whether by a change of the polar axis, by the rarefaction of the gaseous medium above, or by what other means, light was made to visit this region of the globe with its agreeable and quickening influences. We only read that it did not then illuminate the deep of waters, and that by the potent word of God it was then summoned into being. This is an act of creative power, for it is a calling into existence what had previously no existence in that place, and was not owing to the mere development of nature. Hence, the act of omnipotence here recorded is not at variance with the existence of light among the elements of that universe of nature, the absolute creation of which is affirmed in the first verse.
Gen_1:3
Then said God. - In Gen_1:3, God speaks. From this we learn that He not only is, but is such that He can express His will and commune with His intelligent creatures. He is manifest not only by His creation, but by Himself. If light had come into existence without a perceptible cause, we should still have inferred a first Causer by an intuitive principle which demands an adequate cause for anything making its appearance which was not before. But when God says, “Be light,” in the audience of His intelligent creatures, and light forthwith comes into view, they perceive God commanding, as well as light appearing.
Speech is the proper mode of spiritual manifestation. Thinking, willing, acting are the movements of spirit, and speech is the index of what is thought, willed, and done. Now, as the essence of God is the spirit which thinks and acts, so the form of God is that in which the spirit speaks, and otherwise meets the observations of intelligent beings. In these three verses, then, we have God, the spirit of God, and the word of God. And as the term “spirit” is transferred from an inanimate thing to signify an intelligent agent, so the term “word” is capable of receiving a similar change of application.
Inadvertent critics of the Bible object to God being described as “speaking,” or performing any other act that is proper only to the human frame or spirit. They say it is anthropomorphic or anthropopathic, implies a gross, material, or human idea of God, and is therefore unworthy of Him and of His Word. But they forget that great law of thought and speech by which we apprehend analogies, and with a wise economy call the analogues by the same name. Almost all the words we apply to mental things were originally borrowed from our vocabulary for the material world, and therefore really figurative, until by long habit the metaphor was forgotten, and they became to all intents and purposes literal. And philosophers never have and never will have devised a more excellent way of husbanding words, marking analogies, and fitly expressing spiritual things. Our phraseology for mental ideas, though lifted up from a lower sphere, has not landed us in spiritualism, but enabled us to converse about the metaphysical with the utmost purity and propriety.
And, since this holds true of human thoughts and actions, so does it apply with equal truth to the divine ways and works. Let there be in our minds proper notions of God, and the tropical language we must and ought to employ in speaking of divine things will derive no taint of error from its original application to their human analogues. Scripture communicates those adequate notions of the most High God which are the fit corrective of its necessarily metaphorical language concerning the things of God. Accordingly, the intelligent perusal of the Bible has never produced idolatry; but, on the other hand, has communicated even to its critics the just conceptions they have acquired of the spiritual nature of the one true God.
It ought to be remembered, also, that the very principle of all language is the use of signs for things, that the trope is only a special application of this principle according to the law of parsimony, and that the East is especially addicted to the use of tropical language. Let not western metaphysics misjudge, lest it be found to misunderstand eastern aesthetics.
It is interesting to observe in the self-manifesting God, the great archetypes of which the semblances are found in man. Here we have the sign-making or signifying faculty in exercise. Whether there were created witnesses present at the issue of this divine command, we are not here informed. Their presence, however, was not necessary to give significance to the act of speech, any more than to that of self-manifestation. God may manifest Himself and speak, though there be none to see and hear.
We see, too, here the name in existence before the thing, because it primarily refers to the thing as contemplated in thought.
The self-manifesting God and the self-manifesting act of speaking are here antecedent to the act of creation, or the coming of the thing into existence. This teaches us that creation is a different thing from self-manifestation or emanation. God is; He manifests Himself; He speaks; and lastly He puts forth the power, and the thing is done.
Let there be light. - The word “be” simply denotes the “existence” of the light, by whatever means or from whatever quarter it comes into the given locality. It might have been by an absolute act of pure creation or making out of nothing. But it may equally well be effected by any supernatural operation which removes an otherwise insurmountable hinderance, and opens the way for the already existing light to penetrate into the hitherto darkened region. This phrase is therefore in perfect harmony with preexistence of light among the other elementary parts of the universe from the very beginning of things. And it is no less consonant with the fact that heat, of which light is a species or form, is, and has from the beginning been, present in all those chemical changes by which the process of universal nature is carried on through all its innumerable cycles.
Gen_1:4
Then saw God the light that it was good. - God contemplates his work, and derives the feeling of complacence from the perception of its excellence. Here we have two other archetypal faculties displayed in God, which subsequently make their appearance in the nature of man, the understanding, and the judgment.
The perception of things external to Himself is an important fact in the relation between the Creator and the creature. It implies that the created thing is distinct from the creating Being, and external to Him. It therefore contradicts pantheism in all its forms.
The judgment is merely another branch of the apprehensive or cognitive faculty, by which we note physical and ethical relations and distinctions of things. It comes immediately into view on observing the object now called into existence. God saw “that it was good.” That is good in general which fulfills the end of its being. The relation of good and evil has a place and an application in the physical world, but it ascends through all the grades of the intellectual and the moral. That form of the judgement which takes cognizance of moral distinctions is of so much importance as to have received a distinct name, - the conscience, or moral sense.
Here the moral rectitude of God is vindicated, inasmuch as the work of His power is manifestly good. This refutes the doctrine of the two principles, the one good and the other evil, which the Persian sages have devised in order to account for the presence of moral and physical evil along with the good in the present condition of our world.
Divided between the light and between the darkness. - God then separates light and darkness, by assigning to each its relative position in time and space. This no doubt refers to the vicissitudes of day and night, as we learn from the following verse:
Gen_1:5
Called to the light, day, ... - After separating the light and the darkness, he gives them the new names of day and night, according to the limitations under which they were now placed. Before this epoch in the history of the earth there was no rational inhabitant, and therefore no use of naming. The assigning of names, therefore, is an indication that we have arrived at that stage in which names for things will be necessary, because a rational creature is about to appear on the scene.
Naming seems to be designating according to the specific mode in which the general notion is realized in the thing named. This is illustrated by several instances which occur in the following part of the chapter. It is the right of the maker, owner, or other superior to give a name; and hence, the receiving of a name indicates the subordination of the thing named to the namer. Name and thing correspond: the former is the sign of the latter; hence, in the concrete matter-of-fact style of Scripture the name is often put for the thing, quality, person, or authority it represents.
The designations of day and night explain to us what is the meaning of dividing the light from the darkness. It is the separation of the one from the other, and the orderly distribution of each over the different parts of the earth’s surface in the course of a night and a day. This could only be effected in the space of a diurnal revolution of the earth on its axis. Accordingly, if light were radiated from a particular region in the sky, and thus separated from darkness at a certain meridian, while the earth performed its daily round, the successive changes of evening, night, morning, day, would naturally present themselves in slow and stately progress during that first great act of creation.
Thus, we have evidence that the diurnal revolution of the earth took place on the first day of the last creation. We are not told whether it occurred before that time. If there ever was a time when the earth did not revolve, or revolved on a different axis or according to a different law from the present, the first revolution or change of revolution must have produced a vast change in the face of things, the marks of which would remain to this day, whether the impulse was communicated to the solid mass alone, or simultaneously to all the loose matter resting on its surface. But the text gives no intimation of such a change.
At present, however, let us recollect we have only to do with the land known to antediluvian man, and the coming of light into existence over that region, according to the existing arrangement of day and night. How far the breaking forth of the light may have extended beyond the land known to the writer, the present narrative does not enable us to determine.
We are now prepared to conclude that the entrance of light into this darkened region was effected by such a change in its position or in its superincumbent atmosphere as allowed the interchange of night and day to become discernible, while at the same time so much obscurity still remained as to exclude the heavenly bodies from view. We have learned from the first verse that these heavenly orbs were already created. The luminous element that plays so conspicuous and essential a part in the process of nature, must have formed a part of that original creation. The removal of darkness, therefore, from the locality mentioned, is merely owing to a new adjustment by which the pre-existent light was made to visit the surface of the abyss with its cheering and enlivening beams.
In this case, indeed, the real change is effected, not in the light itself, but in the intervening medium which was impervious to its rays. But it is to be remembered, on the other hand, that the actual result of the divine interposition is still the diffusion of light over the face of the watery deep, and that the actual phenomena of the change, as they would strike an onlooker, and not the invisible springs of the six days’ creation, are described in the chapter before us.
Then was evening, then was morning, day one. - The last clause of the verse is a resumption of the whole process of time during this first work of creation. This is accordingly a simple and striking example of two lines of narrative parallel to each other and exactly coinciding in respect of time. In general we find the one line overlapping only a part of the other.
The day is described, according to the Hebrew mode of narrative, by its starting-point, “the evening.” The first half of its course is run out during the night. The next half in like manner commences with “the morning,” and goes through its round in the proper day. Then the whole period is described as “one day.” The point of termination for the day is thus the evening again, which agrees with the Hebrew division of time Lev_23:32.
To make “the evening” here the end of the first day, and so “the morning” the end of the first night, as is done by some interpreters, is therefore equally inconsistent with the grammar of the Hebrews and with their mode of reckoning time. It also defines the diurnal period, by noting first its middle point and then its termination, which does not seem to be natural. It further defines the period of sunshine, or the day proper, by “the evening,” and the night by the morning; a proceeding equally unnatural. It has not even the advantage of making the event of the latter clause subsequent to that of the former. For the day of twenty-four hours is wholly spent in dividing the light from the darkness; and the self-same day is described again in this clause, take it how we will. This interpretation of the clause is therefore to be rejected.
The days of this creation are natural days of twenty-four hours each. We may not depart from the ordinary meaning of the word without a sufficient warrant either in the text of Scripture or in the law of nature. But we have not yet found any such warrant. Only necessity can force us to such an expedient. Scripture, on the other hand, warrants us in retaining the common meaning by yielding no hint of another, and by introducing “evening, night, morning, day,” as its ordinary divisions. Nature favors the same interpretation. All geological changes are of course subsequent to the great event recorded in the first verse, which is the beginning of things. All such changes, except the one recorded in the six days’ creation, are with equal certainty antecedent to the state of things described in the second verse. Hence, no lengthened period is required for this last creative interposition.
Day one - is used here for the first day, the cardinal one being not usually employed for the ordinal in Hebrew Gen_8:13; Exo_10:1-2. It cannot indicate any emphasis or singularity in the day, as it is in no respect different from the other days of creation. It implies that the two parts before mentioned make up one day. But this is equally implied by all the ordinals on the other days.
This day is in many ways interesting to us. It is the first day of the last creation; it is the first day of the week; it is the day of the resurrection of the Messiah; and it has become the Christian Sabbath.
The first five verses form the first parashah (פרשׁ pārāsh) or “section” of the Hebrew text. If this division come from the author, it indicates that he regarded the first day’s work as the body of the narrative, and the creation of the universe, in the first verse, and the condition of the earth, in the second, as mere preliminaries to introduce and elucidate his main statement. If, on the contrary, it proceeds from some transcriber of a subsequent period, it may indicate that he considered the creative work of the first day to consist of two parts, - first, an absolute creation; and, second, a supplementary act, by which the primary universe was first enlightened." (From e-Sword by permission)
 
May 2nd 2015 Genesis 1:3-5 Light For Day One.

Genesis 1:3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 1:4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 1:5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Simply put, God displays His creative abilities. There was darkness on the face of the deep. For me, light is a gift of God. Light hides things that should not be seen, like evil that Scripture speaks about. I have heard people say, it's not safe to walk the streets at night. Not so in the light of day. There are many advantages to light and it's no wonder that God said that it was good.

Now let me see, at this period of time God had not created the sun. Where did the light come from? Some have said that God Himself is the light. Rev 22:5 "And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever."

Others have wondered if before God began to create the earth if there was light somewhere else? I guess that could be true. I'm of the mind that God likes light and shuns darkness. Therefore, where ever He was, must have been light until He approached the area in the universe where He wanted earth.

In the order of created days, we start with night (darkness). "And there was evening and there was morning, the first day." So our days started with the light of day. then night, the first day of creation....Just some thoughts.
Two comments on this part: "first" can't be "first" because there's nothing to compare to it. The proper translation is "Day Only", which of course wouldn't make sense :) Light. It is defined as the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible, but in science this is actually called visible light. As science has observed, what was created was more likely energy, the energy, that's what the Spirit was hovering over to energize and get the atoms moving. Just my 2 cents. :D
 
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