Having thus cleared away a serious difficulty that seemed to obstruct our path, we may proceed without hesitation to the direct object of our inquiry. The burden of proof, let it be remembered, is not with us, but rather with those who contend for Days of twenty-four hours. They must prove that this word Day in the first chapter of Genesis means a period of twenty-four hours, and can mean nothing else. If it may be understood in a wider sense, consistently with the usage of Scripture, that is quite enough for us. We are perfectly at liberty to adopt an interpretation which, on the one hand, the Sacred Text fairly admits, and on the other, the discoveries of Natural Science would seem to demand. Let us examine, then, the arguments that are usually adduced in favor of the popular interpretation.
Throughout the first chapter of Genesis the Hebrew word יוֺם (yom) is everywhere employed by Moses to designate the Days of Creation. And many writers contend that the use of this word is, in itself, evidence enough that he spoke of days in the common sense of the term. It is plain, they say, from the usage of Scripture, that the word יוֺם (yom) had a fixed and certain meaning in the Hebrew language; the same precisely as that which we now attach to the English word Day. Sometimes, when contra-distinguished from night, it was applied to the period of light, from sunrise to sunset; otherwise, it meant the civil day of twenty-four hours, measured by the revolution of the Sun. Moreover, it had unquestionably attained this meaning at the time when Moses wrote, and therefore it could not have been employed by him in any other sense.
This argument rests upon a false foundation. It is true, no doubt, that the word יוֺם (yom) was more usually employed in one or other of the two senses just explained;—that is to say, (1) for the period of light from sunrise to sunset, or (2) for the period of twenty-four hours corresponding to a complete revolution of the Sun. But, for the validity of the argument, it would be necessary to show that, beside these two senses, there is no other in which the word may be fairly understood, conformably to the usage of the Hebrew language. Now this has never yet been proved. On the contrary, the Scripture affords abundant evidence that the word יוֺם (yom) had a third meaning quite different from the other two; that it was freely used to designate a period of time much longer than a common day, and generally of uncertain and indefinite duration. A few examples will be interesting, we hope, to our readers.
In the second chapter of Genesis, Moses, having completed his account of the Creation, says (v. 4): “These are the generations of the Heavens and the Earth when they were created, in the Day (יוֺם, yom) that the Lord God created the Earth and the Heavens: (v. 5), and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew.” There is a good deal of controversy about the precise meaning of this passage. But one thing at least appears to be plain, that the word יוֺם (yom), is not used to designate a day of twenty-four hours; nor yet the period of light from sunrise to sunset; but rather the whole period of the Creation.
On this point almost all our best commentators are agreed. “It is manifest,” says Venerable Bede, “that in this place the sacred writer has put the word Day for all that time during which the primeval creation was brought into existence. For it was not upon any one of the Six Days that the sky was made and adorned with stars, and the dry land was separated from the waters, and furnished with trees and plants. But, according to its accustomed practice, Scripture here uses the word day in the sense of time.” Saint Augustine gives even a wider expansion to the word when he writes: “Seven Days are enumerated above, and now that is called one Day in which God made the Heavens and the Earth, and every green thing of the field; by which term we may well suppose that all time is meant. For God then made all time when He made creatures that live in time; and these creatures are here signified by the Heavens and the Earth.” Molina on the same passage says: “Learned writers tell us commonly that Moses in this place puts the word Day in the sense of Time, just as in the passage of Deuteronomy, ‘The day of perdition is at hand.’... And elsewhere in Scripture Day is often used for Time.” Bannez, too, concurs in this opinion. “The word Day,” he says, “can be understood for any duration whatsoever.” Perrerius, answering an objection taken from this text, says that “Day is put for Time, as is frequently done in Scripture.” And Petavius not only adopts this interpretation, but contends that it is conformable to the usage even of the Greek and Latin writers. He gives an example from Cicero against Verres: “Itaque cum ego diem in Siciliam perexiguam postulavissem, invenit iste qui sibi in Achaiam biduo breviorem diem postularet.”[142] Here, then, is an instance in which Moses himself uses the word Day (יוֺם, yom) not in the ordinary sense, but for a long period of time;—for all that time, whatever it may have been, which elapsed from the first act of creation to the close of the Six Days.
Another striking example occurs in the prophet Amos. “Behold, the days are coming, saith the Lord God, and I will send forth a famine into the land: not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord. And they shall wander from sea to sea and from the north to the east; they shall go about seeking the word of the Lord, and shall not find it. In that day (יוֺם yom) shall the fair virgins and the young men faint for thirst.”[143] Every one will see at a glance that the word Day in the latter part of this passage does not mean a day of twenty-four hours. It evidently refers to the whole period during which the calamities here foretold were to be inflicted on the Jewish people. What that period was may be a question of dispute. By some it is taken for the time of the Babylonian captivity; by others, for the present age of the world, in which the Jews are wanderers on the face of the earth, without a prophet and without a pastor, thirsting for the word of God, and seeking it in vain. But, in any case, it is clear from the opening words: “Behold, the days are coming,” that it was a period not of one day only, but of many.
Then we have those well known words addressed by God the Father to His Eternal Son: “Thou art my Son, this day (יוֺם, yom) have I begotten thee.”[144] The Son of God was begotten of the Father before all ages; and the day, therefore, on which he was begotten, cannot be a common day of twenty-four hours, but must rather be the long day of Eternity, without beginning and without end.
This text, we know, is sometimes applied to the day of our Lord’s Resurrection; and sometimes, too, to the day of His Incarnation: nor do we want to deny that it may be thus rightly explained in a secondary and mystical sense. But in its literal sense we think it plainly refers to the Eternal Generation of the Son. This meaning is sufficiently implied by the word begotten, which cannot be understood with propriety, except of that Generation by virtue of which our Divine Lord was from Eternity the natural Son of God. Moreover, this is the sense in which the passage is adopted by Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews. Wishing to show that Our Lord has received by inheritance a name more excellent than any given to the Angels, he argues thus: “For to which of the Angels hath he said at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee?”[145] Now it seems to us that, unless we understand these words of the Eternal Generation, the point of the Apostle’s argument is completely lost. The Angels are sometimes called in Scripture the sons of God; but they were only the adopted sons, whereas Our Lord was the natural Son in virtue of His Eternal Generation. Consequently it was no other than the Eternal Generation which made the name of Son more excellent when applied to Christ than the same name when applied to the angels.
Again, it is quite a common thing, with the prophets generally, to use the word יוֺם (yom) for the season of tribulation and affliction, though the same may have extended over a period of many days or even many years. Jeremias employs it in this sense when he describes so vividly the manifold calamities that were impending over the ill-fated Babylon. “I have caused thee to fall into a snare, and thou art taken, O Babylon, and thou wast not aware of it: thou art found and caught because thou hast provoked the Lord. The Lord hath opened His armory, and hath brought forth the weapons of his wrath: for the Lord the God of hosts hath a work to be done in the land of the Chaldeans. Come ye against her from the uttermost borders: open, that they may go forth that shall tread her down: take the stones out of the way, and make heaps, and destroy her: and let nothing of her be left. Destroy all her valiant men, let them go down to the slaughter: woe to them, for their day (יוֺם, yom) is come, the time of their visitation. The voice of them that flee, and of them that have escaped out of the land of Babylon: to declare in Sion the revenge of the Lord our God, the revenge of His temple. Declare to many against Babylon, to all that bend the bow: stand together against her round about, and let none escape; pay her according to her work: according to all that she hath done, do ye to her: for she hath lifted up herself against the Lord, against the Holy One of Israel. Therefore shall her young men fall in her streets: and all her men of war shall hold their peace in that day (יוֺם, yom), saith the Lord. Behold I come against thee, O proud one, saith the Lord the God of hosts: for the day (יוֺם, yom) is come, the time of thy visitation. And the proud one shall fall, he shall fall down, and there shall be none to lift him up: and I will kindle afire in his cities, and it shall devour all round about him.”[146] And in the following chapter:—“Thus saith the Lord: Behold, I will raise up as it were a pestilential wind against Babylon, and against the inhabitants thereof who have lifted up their heart against me. And I will send to Babylon fanners, and they shall fan her, and shall destroy her land: for they are come upon her on every side in the day (יוֺם, yom) of her affliction.”[147]
In another place the same prophet applies the word יוֺם (yom) to the whole duration of a long campaign carried on by Nabuchodonosor against Pharao Nechao, king of Egypt. “Prepare ye the shield and buckler, and go forth to battle. Harness the horses, and get up, ye horsemen: stand forth with helmets, furbish the spears, put on coats of mail. What then? I have seen them dismayed, and turning their backs, their valiant ones slain: they fled apace, they looked not back: terror was round about, saith the Lord. Let not the swift flee away, nor the strong think to escape: they are overthrown and fallen down, toward the north by the river Euphrates. Who is this that cometh up as a flood: and his streams swell like those of rivers? Egypt riseth up like a flood, and the waves thereof shall be moved as rivers, and he shall say: I will go up and will cover the earth: I will destroy the city and its inhabitants. Get ye up on horses, and glory in chariots, and let the valiant men come forth, the Ethiopians and the Lybians, that handle the shield, and the Lydians that handle and bend the bow. For this is the day (יוֺם, yom) of the Lord the God of hosts, a day of vengeance that He may revenge Himself of His enemies: the sword shall devour, and shall be filled, and shall be drunk with their blood: for there is a sacrifice of the Lord God of hosts in the north country, by the river Euphrates.... Furnish thyself to go into captivity, thou daughter inhabitant of Egypt: for Memphis shall be made desolate, and shall be forsaken and uninhabited. Egypt is like a fair and beautiful heifer: there shall come from the north one that shall goad her. Her hirelings also that lived in the midst of her, like fatted calves are turned back, and are fled away together, and they could not stand: for the day (יוֺם, yom) of their slaughter is come upon them, the time of their visitation.”[148]