It is quite clear that the six work days of God are identical in duration to the six days of man’s work week. The basis for this very precise commandment is trivial and vacuous otherwise. The observance of seven-day weeks, all through history, and all over the world, with no astronomical basis, is further evidence.
Furthermore, the plural yamim is used here for the six work “days” of God. This word is used more than 700 times in the Old Testament. In none of these occurrences can it be proved to have any meaning except that of literal days.
Two or three secondary arguments relating to the word “day” need to be mentioned. It is frequently urged that since it is not used in a strict literal sense in Genesis 2:4, which says, “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,” it is proper also to interpret it that way in Genesis 1.
At the most, of course, the interpretation could be rendered “in the time that the Lord God” and this has been already recognized as a proper use of yom when the context so justifies. The context does not so justify in Genesis 1, as has been seen. On the other hand, this verse (Gen. 2:4) seems primarily to refer to the first day of creation when, as stated in Genesis 1:1, “God created the heavens and the earth.” But even if the context identifies the entire creation week, that was only six solar days. There is no victory here for those who would advocate long ages.
Another argument has been that since God is still “resting” from His work of creation, and since the seventh day is not concluded by the phrase “evening and morning,” the seventh day is still continuing. Then, if the seventh day has a duration of at least 6,000 years, the other six days also may have been long periods. The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ denomination, in fact, teaches this, maintaining that since the seventh day is 7,000 years in length (including the coming millennium), each of the days is 7,000 years, so that God’s work week was 42,000 years long! Theistic evolutionists or progressive creationists would, on the same basis, have to say that God’s rest day has been at least a million years long since the appearance of man on earth.
Such exegesis is strained, to say the least. The verse does not say, “God is resting on the seventh day,” but rather, “God rested on the seventh day.” Exodus 31:17 even says, “. . . in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.” It is recorded that God “blessed” and “sanctified” the seventh day (Gen. 2:3), but such a beatitude can hardly apply to this present evil age. God’s rest was soon to be interrupted by the entrance of sin “into the world, and death by sin” (Rom. 5:12), so that He had to set about the work of redeeming and restoring His groaning creation. As Jesus said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17). Were it not for the weekly rest day, recalling God’s all-too-brief rest after creation, and now also commemorating His victory over death and the grave, “All the works that are done under the sun . . . [are] vanity and vexation of spirit” (Eccles. 1:14).
Similarly, the verse 2 Peter 3:8, “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years,” has been badly misapplied when used to teach the day-age theory. In its biblical context, it teaches exactly the opposite, and one should remember that “a text without a context is a pretext.” Peter is dealing here with the conflict between uniformitarianism and creationism prophesied in the last days. He is saying that, despite man’s naturalistic scoffings, God can do in one day what, on uniformitarian premises, might seem to require a thousand years. God does not require eons of time to accomplish His work of creating and redeeming all things. It is even interesting that using the above equation — one day for a thousand years or 365,000 days — the actual duration of God’s work with the earth and man — say about 7,000 years — becomes about two and a half billion years, which is at least on the order of magnitude of the “apparent age” of the world as calculated by uniformitarianism!
2. Contradictions between Genesis and the Geological Ages
Even if it were possible to understand “day” in Genesis as referring to something like a geological age (and it is not hermeneutically possible, as just seen), it still would not help any in regard to the concordist motivation. The vague general concordance between the order of creation in Genesis and the order of evolutionary development in geology (and as noted earlier such a vague concordance is to be expected in the nature of the case and thus proves nothing) becomes a morass of contradictions when we progress to an examination of details.
At least 25 such contradictions exist. Note just a few of them:
| Uniformitarianism | Bible |
| Matter existed in the beginning | Matter created by God in the beginning |
| Sun and stars before the earth | Earth before the sun and stars |
| Land before the oceans | Oceans before the land |
| Sun, earth’s first light | Light before the sun |
| Contiguous atmosphere and hydrosphere | Atmosphere between two hydrospheres |
| Marine organisms, first forms of life | Land plants, first life forms created |
| Fishes before fruit trees | Fruit trees before fishes |
| Insects before birds | Birds before insects (“creeping things”) |
| Sun before land plants | Land vegetation before the sun |
| Reptiles before birds | Birds before reptiles (“creeping things”) |
| Woman before man (by genetics) | Man before woman (by creation) |
| Rain before man | Man before rain |
| Creative processes still continuing | Creation completed |
| Struggle and death necessary atecedents of man | Man, the cause of struggle and death |
The previous very sketchy tabulation shows conclusively that it is impossible to speak convincingly of a concordance (harmony) between the geological ages and Genesis. As with the question of evolution or creation, the Genesis record is stubbornly intransigent and will not accommodate the standard system of geological ages. A decision must be made for one or the other — one cannot logically accept both!
3. Identification of the Geological Ages with Evolutionary Suffering
The most serious fallacy in the day-age theory is that it impugns the character of God. It provides the basic exegetical framework for either so-called biblical evolutionism or for progressive creationism. These concepts have been discussed and rejected in the preceding section on this very basis. The God described in the Bible (personal, omnipotent, omniscient, purposeful, gracious, orderly, loving) simply could not use such a process of creation as envisaged by leading evolutionists, with all its randomness, wastefulness, and cruelty.
But Christians must also realize that the geological ages are actually synonymous with evolution! When they accept the geological ages, they are implicitly accepting the evolutionary system (though many do not realize it, and would even deny it).
The geological ages obviously provide the necessary framework of time for evolution. If the universe began only several thousand years ago, then evolution is impossible. It requires billions of years to have even a semblance of plausibility.
Conversely, the only