Literal days, in Genesis 1? A different approach…
I’ve been reading through the book of Genesis lately, and there’s this on-going debate/disagreement over whether the “days” spoken about in Genesis 1 are literal 24-hour days or just unspecified periods of time, anyway I noticed something odd that in Genesis: something would be said, only to be repeated a few verses later if not in the same verse, or it would be explained slightly differently. Here a few examples:
Gen 2:2-3 “And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.”
Gen 9:7 “And you, be fruitful and multiply, teem on the earth and multiply in it.”
Gen 11:8-9 “So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth.. … And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.”
Gen 17:27 “And all the men of his house, those born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him.”
Gen 37:24 “And they took him and cast him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it”
Gen 40:23 “Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.”
Gen 41:1-7 “Pharaoh dreamed… … And Pharaoh awoke, and behold, it was a dream.“
So while this might have been the way the author of Genesis wrote, I think it’s more than just redundancy or to remind the reader in case they’d forgotten what they’d read a few seconds ago… I think it’s written like that to enforce, or emphasise, that something is literal not figurative. This happens to be exactly what we find in Genesis 1:
Gen 1:5 “… And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”
Gen 1:8 “… And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.”
Gen 1:13 “And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.”
Gen 1:19 “And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.”
Gen 1:23 “And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.”
Gen 1:31 “… And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
So, those “evening and morning, the Xth day“s… I think those “days” are… well… days (you know, the kind that have a evening and morning?), and I think those verses are written like that - like the other verse in Genesis (above) - so we can’t get them wrong, or misunderstand what was meant.