Basic HTML Version
'
has several meanings. The word represents the period of “daylight” as
contrasted with nighttime: “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold
and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (Gen. 8:22). The
word denotes a period of twenty-four hours: “And it came to pass, as she spake to Joseph
day by day …” (Gen. 39:10).
'
can also signify a period of time of unspecified
duration: “And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had
rested from all his work which God created and made” (Gen. 2:3). In this verse, “day”
refers to the entire period of God’s resting from creating this universe. This “day” began
after He completed the creative acts of the seventh day and extends at least to the return
of Christ. Compare Gen. 2:4: “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth
when they were created, in the day [
] that the Lord God made the earth and the
heavens.…” Here “day” refers to the entire period envisioned in the first six days of
creation. Another nuance appears in Gen. 2:17, where the word represents a “point of
time” or “a moment”: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not
eat of it: for in the day [
] that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Finally,
when used in the plural, the word may represent “year”: “Thou shalt therefore keep this
ordinance in his season from year to year [
]” (Exod. 13:10).
There are several other special nuances of
when it is used with various
prepositions. First, when used with (“as,” “like”), it can connote “first”: “And Jacob
said, Sell me this day [first] thy birthright” (Gen. 25:31). It may also mean “one day,” or
“about this day”: “And it came to pass about this time, that Joseph went into the house to
do his business …” (Gen. 39:11). On Joseph’s lips, the phrase connotes “this present
result” (literally, “as it is this day”): “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God
meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive” (Gen.
50:20). Adonijah used this same phrase to represent “today”: “Let king Solomon swear
unto me today that he will not slay his servant …” (1 Kings 1:51). Yet another nuance
appears in 1 Sam. 9:13: “Now therefore get you up; for about this time ye shall find him.”
When used with the definite article
, the noun may mean “today” (as it does in Gen.
4:14) or refer to some particular “day” (1 Sam. 1:4) and the “daytime” (Neh. 4:16).
The first biblical occurrence of
is found in Gen. 1:5: “And God called the light
Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first
day.” The second use introduces one of the most debated occurrences of the word, which
is the duration of the days of creation. Perhaps the most frequently heard explanations are
that these “days” are 24 hours long, indefinitely long (i.e., eras of time), or logical rather
than temporal categories (i.e., they depict theological categories rather than periods of
time).
The “day of the Lord” is used to denote both the end of the age (eschatologically) or
some occurrence during the present age (non-eschatologically). It may be a day of either
judgment or blessing, or both (cf. Isa. 2).
It is noteworthy that Hebrew people did not divide the period of daylight into regular
hourly periods, whereas nighttime was divided into three watches (Exod. 14:24; Judg.
7:19). The beginning of a “day” is sometimes said to be dusk (Esth. 4:16) and sometimes
dawn (Deut. 28:66-67).