Can we determine the number of hours ‘in the day’ of Genesis 2:4?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘The Creator and the Creation Stories’ (2001).

This relates to what we were talking about yesterday in the context of the first creation story.¹ We noticed the intriguing phenomenon in that story of how God not only made things but called parts of his creation by various names. The first one was that he called the light ‘Day’, and he called the darkness ‘Night’ (1:5). There, the word Day means the roughly twelve hours of daylight, and the word Night is the roughly twelve hours of darkness. So, ‘Day’ is the twelve hours of daylight.

Yet in this same verse, he called the evening and morning one day. Here, the word ‘day’ means twenty-four hours—the whole thing, comprising the hours of daylight and the hours of darkness. That’s nothing extraordinary, for we have the same idiom in English and a lot of other languages. You might say that somebody is due to arrive next Friday.

I could ask, ‘Is he going to arrive by day or by night?’

‘Friday night,’ you say.

So we’re using the word ‘day’ for the day of the week; and then we’re using the word ‘day’ for the daylight hours, and ‘night’ for the hours in darkness. The word ‘day’, therefore, has two meanings. And because of that, the question now is: Can we determine the number of hours in the day of Genesis 2:4, ‘the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens’?

To answer this, we also need to look at the other part of the creation story, which we considered last time. So look again at the opening verses of Genesis 1:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 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. (vv. 1–2)

And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (vv. 3–5)

I’m not quite sure what the question is implying. Perhaps the questioner might be asking whether the first day of creation begins in verse 1 and extends to the end of verse 5, as multitudes of Christians contend. And if the first day starts in Genesis 1:1, can we determine the number of hours in the day of Genesis 2:4, ‘the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens’?

Well, thinking as I do, my answer to that would be No! I can’t say that we could determine how many hours there are in that day because, for my part, I believe that day one starts only at Genesis 1:3. I believe that because, without exception, all the days of creation start with the same formula, ‘And God said’. Verses 1 and 2 do not start with that formula, and therefore it seems to me that it’s quite possible that the activities of the creator described in these opening verses predate day one. And if that is so, I couldn’t begin to know how long it took God to do this first bit, for I don’t think God has told us. However, I don’t think he included it in day one. To repeat, I think that verses 1 and 2 might well describe God’s earlier work in the universe, so to speak; and his operation there before the six days of creation began relative to our planet.

But I freely admit that that is simply a viewpoint. Multitudes of believers, who are more perceptive than I, hold that day one starts at Genesis 1:1 and goes down to verse 5. If that is so, and you ask me, ‘How many hours are there in that day?’, well, many people think that every day of creation is a day of twenty-four hours, and therefore this day of verse 1 to verse 5 would be a day of twenty-four hours. I don’t think that myself; but they may be right. I wouldn’t want to fall out, and certainly not argue, with any dear Christian over the matter. I must confess that it seems unfortunate to me that sometimes Christians, who equally love the Lord, fall out over such things as these and come to regard each other as budding heretics. I am open to being converted, so to speak.

But what I do believe is that it doesn’t take God more than a split second to say anything. ‘Then God said, “Let us make man”’ (1:26), and if you only had that, you would think that God said it, and there and then in that split second a fully grown man appeared. The second account in Genesis 2 fills in the details and shows us that that was not quite so. God first formed man of the dust of the ground, and then he breathed into him the breath of life (see 2:7). Eventually God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him’ (2:18). So along came Eve, created by God out of Adam’s rib (vv. 21–22). God had brought all the animals to Adam, and Adam named them (v. 20). Genesis 2 doesn’t say how long all that took. It is conceivable, perhaps, that he did it all in one day of twenty-four hours, along with the making of the animals as well. But I myself would draw a distinction between the word of God as the ‘creative fiat’—the creative command of God; and then what you might call ‘development’. These are the two processes that God has used in the creation, strictly so called, of our world: the command or fiat, ‘Let it be done’; and then the necessary consequent development.

That’s all I would want to say at the moment.

¹ See the second talk of 'The Creator and the Creation Stories'.