Genesis 1:5

5. God called the light Day By whatever means or method God caused “the light to shine out of darkness,” (2 Corinthians 4:6,) it is important to observe that he called that light Day. Why now should we take it on ourselves to say, as so many expositors have ventured to do, that “day” in the first chapter of Genesis means a vast cosmogonic period or age? Shall we permit the sacred historian to define his own terms, as he most certainly assumes to do, or foist into his words the speculative theories of modern times? “The Hebrew word yom, (day,)” says Professor Guyot, “is used in this chapter in five different senses, just as we use the word day in common language: 1. The day, meaning light, without reference to time or succession. 2. The cosmogonic day, the nature of which is to be determined. 3. The day of twenty-four hours, in the fourth cosmogonic day, where it is said of the sun and moon, ‘Let them be for days, and for seasons, and for years.’ 4. The light part of the same day of twenty-four hours, as opposed to the night. 5. In Genesis 2:4, the week of creation, or an indefinite period of time . ” Creation, or the Biblical Cosmogony, pp . 50, 51 .

Could any thing be more uncritical, arbitrary, and dogmatic than this deliverance of a Christian scientist? If we may put five different meanings upon one simple word, when the writer himself so definitely gives his own meaning, what may we not make the Bible say? The definition No. 4 above is the one which we adopt, (not, however, limiting it to twenty-four hours,) as being that of the sacred writer himself, and this, we believe, will be sufficient to meet the demands of this entire narrative of creation. The length of this day is not told. It was the period of light, whether twelve hours or a much greater length of time. So far as mere length of time is here denoted, there may have been but one day and one night in a year of our time. This would accord with Professor Warren’s hypothesis of the beginning of human life within the Arctic circle. (See his Paradise Found; the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole. Boston, 1885.)

And the evening and the morning were the first day Better, And there was evening and there was morning, one day. That is, the first day had its evening and its morning. We are not to understand the morning as equivalent to the day, and the evening to the night, nor are we to construe one day as grammatically in apposition with evening and morning. The simplest meaning is, that this first day, like all other days, had an evening and a morning. Evening was probably mentioned before morning in accordance with the ancient custom of reckoning days from evening to evening; not to indicate that the primeval darkness constituted the first evening.