In the ongoing debate over origins, few passages spark more controversy than Genesis 1. Did God create the universe in six literal, 24-hour days, or are these “days” poetic frameworks, vast eons, or hiding ancient catastrophes? Drawing from Hebrew grammar, biblical theology, and cross-references, this post makes the case for ordinary solar days—a framework that harmonizes Scripture without bending it to modern science. We’ll also dismantle the popular Gap Theory. All quotes from the King James Version .

The Hebrew Case for Literal Days

At the heart of Genesis 1 is the word “yom”, translated “day.” In the Old Testament, it appears over 400 times, and when paired with numbers, ordinals, or the phrase “evening and morning”—as it is here—yom invariably means a literal, 24-hour day. Consider Genesis 1:5: “And the evening and the morning were the first day.” This formula repeats for each of the six days: evening twilight followed by morning dawn, bracketing a single cycle of light and dark.

Why this precision? Hebrew uses “evening and morning” as a merism, a figure of speech encompassing the whole of something by its opposite ends—like “heaven and earth” for the entire cosmos. Elsewhere in Scripture, this exact construction always denotes ordinary days: Exodus 18:10 speaks of “these three days,” and no one imagines millennia there. If Moses intended indefinite periods, why bother with such a concrete, daily rhythm? It would be like describing geological ages as “sunrise to sunset.” Superfluous and misleading.

The numerical structure reinforces this: “the first day,” “the second day,” up to the sixth. Hebrew grammar scholars note that yom with ordinals never refers to long epochs in the entire Old Testament. The two exceptions where “yom” stretches figuratively—Hosea 6:2  and Psalm 90:4 —are prophetic poetry with clear contextual markers absent in Genesis.

The Sabbath Command: God’s Own Interpretation

Exodus seals the deal. The fourth commandment explicitly links God’s creative work to human labor:

“Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God… For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it” .

Here, Israel’s week of work and rest mirrors God’s exactly. If the Creator’s “days” were eons, commanding mortals to emulate them with literal days would be incoherent—like telling someone to “rest for a millennium.” Exodus 31:17 adds, “in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.” This portrays a real sequence, not allegory. The sabbath is a covenant sign, grounded in history, not metaphor.

Addressing the Sun on Day Four

Critics object: “The sun wasn’t created until Day Four —how could prior days be solar?” This overlooks the text’s phenomenological language. God separated light from darkness on Day One , establishing time before the sun’s role as Earth’s clock and light-bearer. Ancient readers understood light cycles via observable phenomena, much like we say “sunrise” despite knowing Earth’s rotation. The Hebrew emphasizes function: luminaries “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.” No conflict.

Refuting the Gap Theory: No Pre-Adamic Ruin

One popular workaround is the Gap Theory, which posits a perfect creation in Genesis 1:1 , followed by a catastrophic gap before verse 2 . Proponents claim the earth “became”  a ruined wasteland due to Satan’s fall, with Days 1-6 as “re-creation.” This reconciles fossils and old-earth geology but crumbles under scrutiny.

Grammatically, verse 1 is a disjunctive summary—”God created the heavens and the earth”—with verse 2 elaborating on the earth’s initial, unfinished state: watery, dark, and formless . The verb hayah  functions as a simple copula 58 out of 67 times in Hebrew; it doesn’t imply “became ruined,” as in English translations like the Scofield Reference Bible. No ancient Jewish or Christian interpreters read a gap here—it’s a 19th-century invention to fit uniformitarian geology.

Contextually, Genesis 1 flows as progressive forming and filling: Days 1-3 shape realms , Days 4-6 fill them . Inserting a global cataclysm disrupts this without textual hint. The Spirit of God “moved upon the face of the waters” —a creative hover, not post-judgment cleanup.

Theologically, it’s disastrous. A gap implies death before sin: billions of years of fossils  before Adam’s fall contradicted Romans 5:12 . Exodus 20:11 states God made “all things” in those six days—no prior world. Isaiah 45:18 clarifies God “formed the earth… to be inhabited”—not to ruin and restart. Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14, twisted to place Lucifer’s fall in the gap, describe future tyrants, not prehistory.

The Gap Theory, popularized by C.I. Scofield in 1917, admits no pre-modern support from Luther, Calvin, or rabbis. It’s concordism gone wrong, forcing Scripture to prop up deep time.

Why It Matters: A Young Creation, Sinless Origins

Literal days yield a mature creation ~6,000-10,000 years ago, aligning with genealogies , soft tissue in dinosaur bones, and global flood geology. Critically, no death pre-Fall: paradise perfect until sin .

Day-age or framework views poetize away plain reading, echoing higher criticism. God accommodated ancient Hebrews expecting ordinary history, not astrophysics.

Conclusion: Trust the Text

Genesis 1 proclaims a sovereign Creator finishing masterpiece in six solar days, resting to model sabbath. No gaps, no eons—just “evening and morning,” as any Hebrew reader knew. Science questions? Pursue them faithfully, but let God interpret God.

Pushback welcome in comments!