Genesis 1:5 — ‘God called the light, Day … the darkness, Night … the evening and the morning were the first day’

In Gen. 1:5, God is not only describing what the world was like when He created it but what it will be like when He returns to re-create it. That may be the spiritual picture behind light and darkness, evening and morning in this verse.

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Food for thought from the recorded discussion

These discussions on Genesis may be highly technical, but the goal is for us to understand how God thinks and how He expresses Himself in the original language of the passage, Hebrew.

When Genesis says, “God spoke” or “God saw,” what He is seeing or what He is speaking is very important. He is drawing our attention to it. When He says, “it was good” (ki tov ) because everything God made was good.

Vayikra (“And He called”; Strong’s 7121) in Gen. 1:5 is also the name of the book of Leviticus in Hebrew versions of the Bible, which take the book name from on of the opening words of the book.

(Gen. 1:5,6,10) God spoke this out loud. This was not just a thought in His mind. He used the spoken word. When He called out these things, He also gave them a name, because they were all good.

Later in Gen. 2:19, Adam called () the animals and gave them names, just like God did in Genesis 1.

God comes in the middle of the night. He came at midnight in the 10 plagues of Egypt. That explains why the world will be in darkness (khoshekh ) when Yeshua comes.

Yom (; Strong’s 3117) means day, light. Yom has many different meanings throughout the Bible, just as the word “day” in English has many different meanings depending on the context. Here are a few examples where the word day does not refer to a 24-hour period: Gen. 2:17; Gen. 3:5; Gen. 5:1 Gen. 4:3.

God called this khoshekh, leiyla (; Strong’s 3915), or “night.” In Hebrew, a more literal translation of leiyla is “to twist or fold away the light.” When the darkness/night twists or folds back, it disappears and the dawn/light comes. The Earth rolls away from the sun and then rolls towards the sun in a continual pattern on its axis. The Adversary is the ultimate khoshekh, yet he can appear as an “angel of light” (2nd Cor. 11:14). Leiyla replaces khosekh.

Mankind tries to do his best to twist and turn away from what is holy and to try to change what is holy into what is unholy and visa versa. God doesn’t bring on “Jacob’s trouble,” mankind brings it upon themselves by turning away from what is truly holy and turns towards what is unholy. Jacob’s trouble is a judgment against all the house of Israel.

Those who know who God is “do not keep silent” to the world around them (Isa. 62:6-7).

“and the evening and the morning were the first day”