Genesis 1.14-19.
In the Genesis 1 creation story, God separated waters below from the waters above, and put a
רָקִיעַ/raqíya,
“ceiling,” above the waters below, to keep back the waters above. The KJV translates raqíya as “firmament,” a solid object, and the ESV as “expanse,” a not-so-solid object. I say this because today’s Christians are obviously disagreed about what a raqíya is, since we’ve been to space and discovered there’s no such solid object up there. But the ancients and medievals believed it is a solid object—especially since today’s passage of Genesis describes God putting lights in this ceiling.
I know; other bible translations try to fudge exactly what he’s doing because the more literal they are, the less this looks like the actual universe. And as I keep saying, the point of Genesis 1 is not to describe the actual universe. It’s not a science book; it’s a theology book. It’s to emphasize God created everything. Including the lights in the skies.
- Genesis 1.14-19 KWL
- 14God said, “Be, lights in the ceiling of the skies,
- to separate between the day and the night,
- Be signs for festivals,
- and for days and years.
- 15Be lights in the ceiling of the skies
- to light the land.”
- It was so.
- 16God made two great lights:
- the great light to rule the day,
- and the small light to rule the night and the stars.
- 17God put them in the ceiling of the skies
- to light the land.
- God saw how good it was.
- 19It was dusk, then dawn.
- Day four.
Y’might notice the author of Genesis—I’m gonna call him Moe for now—doesn’t use the words for sun and moon. Not because there weren’t any; there totally are. Psalm 104, the creation psalm, mentions them. Ps 104.19 Moe later tells us Joseph dreamed of them. Ge 37.9 These words are
שֶׁמֶשׁ/šeméš,
“sun,” and
יֶרַח/yerákh
“moon, month.” So why did Moe instead call them “the great light” and “the small light”? Because to ancient pagans,
𐤔𐤌𐤔/Šamáš,
more often spelled Shamash, whom the Sumerians called
𒀭𒌓 /Utu,
wasn’t just what you called our sun; it’s the sun god. Likewise
𐤉𐤓𐤇/Yaríkh
was the moon god, and a pretty important god in Ugaritic mythology. Moe did not want his readers to think the LORD created these pagan gods; the LORD only created the lights in the sky. “The great light” and “the small light.” Which aren’t gods. Don’t worship them. Dt 4.19, 17.3
Moe also stated God’s intent for their creation: Timekeeping. Other than seconds, which are based on the human heartbeat, or weeks, which are based on… well, this chapter of Genesis, our whole concept of timekeeping is based on the relative position of these lights in the sky. The position of the sun indicates morning, noon, and evening; at what point in the day we are. The phases of the moon indicate at what point in the month we are—and when the Hebrew festivals take place, which are often on full moons. The positions of the stars indicate at what point in the year we are.
What about planets? Well Genesis says nothing about planets. The ancients noticed those—“stars” that move away from their places in the constellations, and started to speculate about what they mean… and came up with astrology. Christians noticed the magi tracked Jesus by following a moving star, and as a result too many Christians began to dabble in astrology. Since God said the lights in the sky were to be signs, some of ’em justified astrology that way. Through it they invented astronomy, and it took a long time before the science finally divorced itself from the superstition. Nowadays some Evangelicals assume astrology has always been forbidden to Christians, and are startled to discover Christian history shows otherwise.
The bible actually has nothing about astrology in it—neither condemning nor endorsing it. Mainly because ancient Hebrews simply didn’t practice it. There’s no point: If the Hebrews wanted know the future, if they wanted to know God’s will, they worshiped a living God. Unlike pagans, their God talked. Why bother to try to deduce stuff from staring at the sky when God will straight-up tell you?
And that’s what Christians should be doing today. Listen to God, then confirm it’s actually God talking. Leave astrology to the pagans who don’t know any better.
Yes, this isn’t a scientific description.
Realistically not even the most conservative biblical literalist takes this passage literally. Oh, some young-earth creationists totally claim they do, but no they don’t. Not at all.
Moe described the sun, moon, and stars in that ceiling. I’ve heard young-earth creationists describe the sun and moon as under the firmament, but the prefix
בְּ/be-,
“in, at, with, by, by means of” doesn’t grant us “under” as a translation option. The lights in the sky are part of the ceiling he’s described.
By Jesus’s day, everybody knew space is huge. Around 150BC, Egyptian astronomer Claudius Ptolemy wrote in his book Almagest—which quickly became everybody’s textbook on astronomy—that in calculating the distance between the stars and our planet, we have to treat Earth as a zero-dimensional mathematical point. And he wasn’t even speculating about light years; I don’t think he even imagined light takes time to travel. Space is way bigger than Ptolemy ever imagined. But even a universe of Ptolemy’s reckoning is huge.
Now, humanity has been to space; we have astronauts and cosmonauts in the International Space Station right now. We know what our atmosphere consists of, what’s above it, and how far away these lights in the sky are; we did the math. If there’s a back wall of the universe, holding back the waters above, how vast is it? How far away must it be? How much water is that ceiling holding back? That’s gotta be a crazy amount of water.
How do young-earth creationists deal with this quandary? They don’t. They avoid making any connection between the raqíya in verses 6-8, with the raqíya in verse 14. When they read the earlier verses about “the firmament” or “the expanse” between waters and waters, fine; waters above and waters below; they dismiss the idea. Because if they ever entertain the idea… well, they’ve been warned if they don’t believe the bible, they can’t trust their own salvation, and oh boy are they afraid they’re gonna doubt their way into hell. It’s gonna turn into a massive faith crisis later.
Later, signs of the times.
So, that’s the fourth day. Yes, there were three whole days… before God created the sun so it could distinguish days. Yes that’s an obvious paradox. Which didn’t bother Moe, and shouldn’t bother us. It should only bother literalists.
Humanity invented Coordinated Universal Time (UTC for short), monitored by atomic clocks, and adopted it as our global standard in 1963. So we don’t really use the sun and stars for timekeeping anymore… except we kinda do. Every so often the International Telecommunication Union announces leap seconds, because we’re trying to sync UTC with our planet’s rotation, and position round the sun. Nature still kinda has the final word on timekeeping.
Obviously the sun isn’t just for timekeeping; it provides light and heat and energy for the world, and food for photosynthetic creatures. And God reserves the right to use the sun, moon, and stars for other signs. Like signs the End has come. Is 13.10, Jl 2.31, Lk 21.25, etc. And of course God blocked the sun to plague the Egyptians, Ex 10.21-22 and put it out when Jesus died. Mk 15.33 But of course we had to step away from Genesis for all that… as you usually do when you wanna discuss the sun.
