There is a text in the eighth chapter of the prophet Daniel which might, perhaps, appear at first sight to militate against our opinion. The prophet had a vision in which it was foreshadowed that Antiochus Epiphanes should come and prevail against the Jews, and should profane the temple of God, and should abolish the daily sacrifice. One of the Angels in the vision is heard asking of another, for how long should the daily sacrifice cease, and the sanctuary remain desolate. And the answer is given in these words: “Unto evening-morning (עד ערב בקר, ghad ghereb boker) two thousand three hundred; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.”[157] Now, this is commonly understood to mean that the daily sacrifice should be abolished for two thousand three hundred days. And therefore, it would seem that, in this passage, the evening and morning are used to signify the whole civil day of twenty-four hours.
We will not dispute the correctness of the interpretation which is here set forth, although the words of the Angel are explained in a very different sense by many eminent commentators. But we think that the passage, even when understood according to this interpretation, cannot fairly be brought in evidence against us. The evening and the morning do not make up the whole day: but they occur once, and only once, in each day. Therefore a period of many days may be properly signified by noting the recurrence of the evening and morning a certain number of times. And in point of fact, a usage of this kind seems to prevail in most languages. The common word fortnight, in English, affords a good illustration. It signifies a period of fourteen nights and days: yet it does not specify the recurrence of fourteen days, but only the recurrence of fourteen nights. Again, the poet says:
“Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers.”
Nobody would argue from these examples that the word summer means a period of twelve months; or that the word night means a period of twenty-four hours. And so, in the case before us, the recurrence of the evening and morning two thousand three hundred times may be pointed out to mark a period of two thousand three hundred days, although the evening and morning are not the whole day, but only certain parts of the day. Nay, more; we fancy we can see a good reason why the Angel in the vision should single out the evening and the morning for special notice. He had been asked about the profanation of the sanctuary, and the abolition of the daily sacrifice. Now it was in the evening and the morning that the daily sacrifice was wont to be offered. And the Angel seems to answer: The evening and the morning shall return two thousand three hundred times; and there shall be no evening and morning sacrifice: but, after that time, the sanctuary shall be cleansed and sacrifice restored.
So far we have been arguing from the common usage of Scripture that the evening and the morning mentioned in the history of the Creation cannot mean the whole night and the whole day. But there is a special objection against this interpretation from the history of the Creation itself. The fifth verse in the first chapter of Genesis runs thus: “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning the First Day.” In the first sentence it is recorded that God, having divided the light from the darkness, gave to each its proper name: He called the light, Day; and the darkness, Night. Is it not highly improbable that, after this announcement, the sacred writer would himself, in the very next sentence, employ names altogether different, if he wished to designate the period of light and the period of darkness?
We are not maintaining that the phrase under consideration—“there was evening and there was morning the First Day”—cannot be explained on the hypothesis that the Days of Creation were days of twenty-four hours. But we do contend that it affords no conclusive proof in favor of that hypothesis; because even in that hypothesis the meaning of the phrase is still doubtful and obscure. For ourselves, we candidly confess we can offer no explanation that seems to us, in any system of interpretation, altogether satisfactory. We may be allowed, however, to call attention to an opinion put forward by Saint Augustine, which fits in very appropriately with the doctrine that the Days of Creation were long periods of time. The distinctions of evening and morning, he says, are not to be understood in reference to the rising and setting of the Sun, which, in point of fact, was not created until the Fourth Day; but rather in reference to the works themselves that are recorded to have been produced. In this way the evening will naturally represent the bringing to an end of the work that had been accomplished; and the morning, on the other hand, the coming in of the work that was to be. This opinion was afterward adopted by Saint Eucherius, Bishop of Lyons, who seems almost to borrow the very words of Saint Augustine; and also by Venerable Bede, who says: “What is the evening, but the completion of each work? and the morning, but the beginning of the next?” In the twelfth century we find it again set forth by Saint Hildegarde, who was considered by Saint Bernard, as well as by Pope Eugenius the Third, to have been gifted with the spirit of prophecy.[158] This interpretation, it is true, does not explain the words evening and morning according to their literal signification: but then the metaphorical sense it ascribes to them is both simple and appropriate; more especially if we understand the word Day in the sense of a long and indefinite period. As the morning literally means the break of day, and the evening its decline, the Sacred Writer might, not inaptly, have employed these words to represent metaphorically the opening and the close of the various works which are ascribed to each successive period in the history of the Creation.
It may be observed, moreover, that this explanation seems quite in accord with the etymology of the Hebrew words עֶרֶב (Ghereb), and בּקר (Boker). The latter is formed from the root בּקֶר (Bakar), to lay open, and used to signify the morning, because in the morning the light of the sun is, as it were, unveiled, and laid open to the earth. Hence, the word might be applied with much propriety, in a metaphorical sense, to the unfolding of the various works of God, as each new period was, in its turn, ushered in with a new act of Creation. On the other hand, עֶרֶב (Ghereb) seems to be derived from ערב (Gharab), to mingle, and has probably come to signify the evening, as the famous Hebrew scholar, Aben Ezra, suggests, because, in the uncertain light of evening, the forms of external objects lose their distinctness of outline, and become, in a manner, blended together. And so this word might have been employed, not unfitly, to represent the close of each period in the creation, which was marked, as Geologists tell us, by the gradual dying out or extinction of the various forms of life peculiar to that period. Anyhow, in following the opinion of so ancient and so venerable an authority as Saint Augustine, we cannot be charged with unduly straining the Sacred Text to meet the exigencies of modern science.
The next argument is founded on a passage in Exodus, to which we have already had occasion to refer: “Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: thou shalt do no work on it, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy beast, nor the stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made the Heavens and the Earth, and the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.”[159] We are to work upon six days, and to rest upon the seventh; because in six days God accomplished all the works of the creation, and rested on the seventh. There can be no mistake as to the meaning of this commandment. The six days on which it is lawful to labor are, beyond all doubt, six days in the common sense of the word; six days of twenty-four hours each: and the seventh day, on which it is forbidden to work, is a day of the same kind. But the example of God’s labor and God’s rest is set forth, in the text, as the pattern after which this law of the Sabbath was framed. And therefore, the six days in which God furnished and embellished the earth must have been likewise six days of twenty-four hours each. This argument is regarded by many writers as decisive.
To us, on the contrary, it seems by no means necessary to understand the days on which God labored and rested, in precisely the same sense as the days on which it is enjoined that we should labor and rest. The examples of God is, no doubt, represented in the Sacred Text as the reason for the Jewish Sabbath: “Six days shalt thou labor, and rest upon the seventh; for in six days the Lord made the Heavens and the Earth, and rested on the seventh.” But, suppose for a moment that the days of creation were long periods of time, will not the significance of this reason remain unchanged? As God, in the great work of the creation, labored for six successive periods, and then rested for a seventh, so shall you likewise do all your work during six of those successive periods into which your time is divided, and rest upon the seventh.