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NASB | Genesis 1:3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Genesis 1:3 And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. |
Subject: Did God create light twice? |
Bible Note: There are two things we are wise not to be dogmatic about, the first is the beginning of all things, and the second is the end of all things. Both are outside the sphere of our understanding. We are told that in the beginning God created hashamayim (the heavens) and haaretz (the 'earth' or 'the place'). Now as angelic beings are introduced early on (in chapter 3) it is clear that this includes the heavens where they dwell. Nothing further is said about this creation. We are probably unwise to speak of 'before creation'. That assumes time, but time was created along with the universe. We can speak of eternal time, but humanly speaking that is impossible when looking back. There had to be a beginning. And here we are told that that beginning was in the act of creation. It is true that Jesus does speak of 'before the world was' but that is using human language to describe the indescribable. We simply have to accept things as they are recognising thst we cannot understand eternity. All the emphasis in chapter 1 is on the creation of ha-aretz. And it is soon apparent that this term includes the skies, and the heavenly bodies. Thus it does not strictly mean earth. Eretz is indeed a broad term. It can mean our earth, it can mean dry land as opposed to sea, or it can mean 'a country'. In other words it refers to what finally contains man. Thus prior to the creation of light and dry land it probably indicates 'the stuff of the universe' (it includes sun, moon and stars and the sky). We are told in verse 2 what the stuff of the universe consisted of. It was shapeless and empty and totally lacking in light, although at some stage prior to the creation of light there was 'the deep'. But that is probably intended to indicate simply that there was no land which was liveable on. The whole point of this description is that God was about to work on a 'blank canvas' (shapeless waste and uninhabitable) and create our universe. Darkness was not created. It was simply lack of light. God then introduced light by His word. What had been empty and waste and totally dark suddenly became changed at God's word. Light pervaded our universe. This is probably an indication of the creation of electro-magnetic-waves which are a form of light. Suddenly the stuff of the universe had form and substance. Let God withdraw light and the universe would collapse into nothingness. Holmes is right to suggest that this started the first yom. Thus the first yom did not have an evening and a morning. It started with light. This is a warning not to take evening and morning literally. It clearly simply means beginning and ending. As light had not been separated from darkness until in the midst of this first yom an evening and a morning were previously an impossibility. This also demonstrates that we are not to take the yom pattern as a 'day' in our sense of the term (strictly yom means a period of time). This is confirmed by the fact that times and seasons, days and years were not fixed until the fourth yom. There were no 'days' in our sense of the word before that. It was on the fourth yom that God caused the heavenly bodies to rule the times and seasons, days and years. That means that they had not done so before then. Nights and days as we know them did not exist until then. That was God's purpose in fashioning the sun and the moon and bringing them into play. But it should be noted that God did not create light on the fourth yom as well. What he brought into action were the 'lamps' that gave light for man. Thus there were not two creations of light. |