Let There Be Lights – Genesis 1:14-19

Genesis puts the making of the sun and moon on day four, but light shines on day one.  Young earth creationists (see, for example, AnswersinGenesis.org) say the light on day one was a fixed light but was not the sun.  Old earth creationists (see, for example, Reasons.org) say the sun existed before day four but was not visible until then to someone standing on earth because clouds concealed it.  Walton argues that the “making” of sun and moon does not mean creating them from nothing but rather giving them their purpose.  What is most critical to know, from Moses’ perspective, is that sun and moon were not deities, but creations of Yahweh Elohim.

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. (Genesis 1:14–19, ESV)

As Evans has noted, “Gen 1:16 refers to the sun and moon as simply the “greater light” and the “lesser light.” This reticence to explicitly mention the sun (shamesh) and moon (yareah) was likely because in Canaan and Mesopotamia, the name of the sun god was Shamesh and the name of the moon god was Yareah. In other words, the names of these gods were the same as the name of the heavenly bodies they represented.”  Genesis one is an apologetic against the religious views of the day that failed to see the one true God, Yahweh, as originator of these created phenomena.

The function of sun and moon was to be “for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years, and…to give light upon the earth.”  They were “signs,” as Keil and Delitzsch note, by being “portents of extraordinary events (Matthew 2:2; Luke 21:25) and divine judgments (Joel 2:30; Jeremiah 10:2; Matthew 24:29), partly as showing the different quarters of the heavens, and as prognosticating the changes in the weather.”  They were not intended to provide astrological information, as Isaiah 47:13 makes clear (All the counsel you have received has only worn you out! Let your astrologers come forward, those stargazers who make predictions month by month, let them save you from what is coming upon you).

Though sun and moon are not deities, they are personified as rulers of day and night.  The sun determines the boundaries of the daytime, as the moon and stars do the night.  If we are to judge the sun, moon and stars as to their effectiveness as rulers, someone has said, “The best and most honorable way of ruling is by giving light and doing good.”