The prophet Ezechiel, too, furnishes a forcible illustration when he thus foreshadows the course of a second expedition against Egypt undertaken by the same prince:— “Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will set Nabuchodonosor the king of Babylon in the land of Egypt: and he shall take her multitude, and take the booty thereof for a prey, and rifle the spoils thereof: and it shall be wages for his army; and for the service he hath done me against it: I have given him the land of Egypt, because he hath labored for me, saith the Lord God. In that day (יוֺם, yom) a horn shall bud forth for the house of Israel, and I will give thee an open mouth in the midst of them: and they shall know that I am the Lord.”[149] And a little further on:—“For the day (יוֺם, yom) is near, yea the day of the Lord is near: a cloudy day, it shall be the time of the nations. And the sword shall come upon Egypt: and there shall be dread in Ethiopia, when the wounded shall fall in Egypt, and the multitude thereof shall be taken away, and the foundations thereof shall be destroyed. Ethiopia and Lybia, and Lydia, and all the rest of the crowd, and Chub, and the children of the land of the covenant, shall fall with them by the sword.... And they shall know that I am the Lord: when I shall have set a fire in Egypt, and all the helpers thereof shall be destroyed. In that day (יוֺם, yom), shall messengers go forth from my face in ships to destroy the confidence of Ethiopia, and there shall be dread among them in that day (יוֺם, yom) of Egypt: because it shall certainly come.”[150]
Once more, this word is applied to the period of Our Lord’s life upon earth, and even to the whole duration of the Christian Church. Sophonias, for example, thus foretells the coming of the kingdom of Christ. “Wherefore expect me, saith the Lord, in the day of my resurrection that is to come, for my judgment is to assemble the Gentiles, and to gather the kingdoms.... From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia shall my suppliants, the children of my dispersed people, bring me an offering. In that day (יוֺם, yom) thou shalt not be ashamed for all thy doings, wherein thou hast transgressed against me: for then I will take away out of the midst of thee thy proud boasters, and thou shalt no more be lifted up because of my holy mountain.... Give praise, O daughter of Sion: shout, O Israel: be glad and rejoice with all thy heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord hath taken away thy judgment, he hath turned away thy enemies: the King of Israel the Lord is in the midst of thee, thou shalt fear evil no more. In that day (יוֺם, yom) it shall be said to Jerusalem: Fear not; to Sion: Let not thy hands be weakened. The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, He will save: He will rejoice over thee with gladness, He will be silent in His love, He will be joyful over thee in praise.”[151]
And Isaias: “Is it not yet a very little while, and Libanon shall be turned into a charmel, and charmel shall be esteemed as a forest? And in that day (יוֺם, yom) the deaf shall hear the words of the book, and out of darkness and obscurity the eyes of the blind shall see. And the meek shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.”[152] That this passage refers to the time of the Christian Church there can be no doubt; for our Lord himself appeals to it in proof of His divine mission: “Go and relate to John what you have heard and seen. The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, the poor have the Gospel preached to them.”[153]
We may trace this use of the word even in the New Testament. Our Lord says, arguing with the Jews: “Abraham your father rejoiced that he might see my day: he saw it and was glad.”[154] Saint Paul, too, though writing in the Greek language to the Corinthians, does not hesitate to adopt a passage from Isaias, in which the same meaning is conspicuously brought out: “And we helping do exhort you, that you receive not the grace of God in vain. For he saith: In an accepted time have I heard thee, and in the day of salvation have I helped thee. Behold, now is the acceptable time: behold, now is the day of salvation.”[155] And finally, Our Divine Lord, in His last touching address to the city of Jerusalem, applies the word day to the season of grace and mercy: “When he drew near, seeing the city, He wept over it, saying: If thou also hadst known, and that in this thy day, the things that are to thy peace: but now they are hidden from thy eyes. For the days shall come upon thee; and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side.”[156]
So much, then, for the first argument. From the numerous examples we have given it is plain enough that the word יוֺם (yom), in Scripture language, was often used for a period of many days, and even many years; nay sometimes for a period of many centuries. If so, Moses was free to use it in this sense. And consequently, as far as the word itself is concerned, it affords no conclusive proof that the Days of Creation were days of twenty-four hours only: we may hold them to belong and indefinite periods of time, without departing in any degree from the established usage of Scripture.
But it is urged—and this is the second argument,—that, whatever may be the meaning of the word יוֺם (yom) elsewhere, in the first chapter of Genesis it must mean a day of twenty-four hours. For we are not merely told that there was a First Day, and a Second Day, and a Third Day; but each day is in a manner analyzed by the sacred writer, and its component parts set forth for our instruction. There was evening and there was morning, he says, the First Day; there was evening and there was morning the Second Day; there was evening and there was morning the Third Day; and so on. Now if the word were understood of those indefinite periods we have been speaking about, there would be no meaning in this analysis: for it could hardly be maintained that each of those periods had but one evening and one morning like an ordinary day. Furthermore, it is argued that there is a peculiar appropriateness in this phrase, which goes far to confirm the common interpretation. Amongst the Jews it was usual to compute the civil day from sunset to sunset. The civil day began then with the evening. And accordingly Moses, in describing the Days of Creation, puts the evening first, and says: There was evening and there was morning the First Day; there was evening and there was morning the Second Day; and so for the rest.
All this reasoning seems to us unsatisfactory and inconclusive. In the first place, it is not a fact, as would seem to be supposed, that the civil day is made up of evening and morning. The evening and the morning do not make the whole day; they are only certain periods of the day. Neither do they mark the limits of the day: for, though it is quite true that, in the computation of the Jews, the civil day began with the evening, it certainly did not end with the morning. If, then, by the word Day, Moses here meant the civil day of twenty-four hours, how is this clause to be understood, There was evening and there was morning the First Day? It cannot mean that the evening and the morning put together made up the First Day: for this is not a fact. It cannot mean that the evening marked the beginning of the day, and the morning marked its close: for the period included between the evening and the morning is not the day but the night. What does it mean, then?
Many writers seem to suppose that the evening and the morning are intended by Moses to designate the night and the day;—that is to say, the whole period of darkness and the whole period of light, which put together make up the civil day of twenty-four hours. If the text could be explained in this way, it would fit in, no doubt, much more appropriately with the theory of ordinary days than with the theory of indefinite periods. But the text cannot be explained in this way. The evening is not the whole period of darkness, and the morning is not the whole period of light. No English writer could say, with propriety, that the Day is made up of the evening and the morning. Neither could Moses have meant to say this in the first chapter of Genesis: for the Hebrew words ערב (Ghereb) and בקר (Boker) which are found in the original text, have a meaning not less fixed and definite than the corresponding words Evening and the Morning in the English language.
To prove the truth of this assertion by an investigation of all the passages in the Hebrew Bible, in which these words are found, would be a tedious and uninteresting task. But it may be easily tested in another way. If the words ערב (Ghereb) and בקר (Boker) were ever used to mean, not strictly the evening and morning, but the whole period of night and the whole period of day, this fact would surely have become known in the course of time to some of the many eminent and accomplished Hebrew lexicographers. We ask, then, is there one Hebrew lexicon of note which assigns the sense of night to the word ערב (Ghereb) and the sense of day to the word בקר (Boker). For ourselves, we have searched several of the best of them, and we have not found a single one that even hints at such an explanation.
Perhaps, however, some of our readers might be unwilling to accept the authority of lexicons as conclusive on a point of this kind; seeing that lexicons very often represent but imperfectly the full power of a language. Well, then, there is another process, and a simple one enough, by which they may demonstrate the inaccuracy of our statement, if inaccurate it be. Let them produce any passage from the Hebrew Bible in which the words ערב (Ghereb) and בקר (Boker) are employed to designate the whole night and the whole day. If they fail to do so,—and as far as we are aware, no such passage has yet been discovered,—then surely we may fairly contend that the interpretation which thus explains the words in the first chapter of Genesis cannot be regarded as certain: nor can the argument founded on that interpretation be received as conclusive.