This Genesis 1:5 interlinear study looks word by word at the Hebrew behind Day, Night, evening, morning, and the phrase yom echad, or “one day.”
Genesis 1:5
God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
If I had never heard Genesis 1:5 before, and all I knew was what these Hebrew words are telling me, how would I say this?
The same Elohim who created, spoke, saw, and separated is now naming what He has distinguished. He gives the light a name: Day. Then He does the same for the darkness: Night. And what God has distinguished and named now occurs: there was evening, and there was morning. Together, this is described as “yom echad”… one day.
Genesis 1:4 Interlinear Study:
Background and Breakdown:
Okay.
Genesis 1:5 sent me down a rabbit hole I was absolutely not planning to go down.
At first, this verse seemed pretty straightforward.
God calls the light Day.
He calls the darkness Night.
There is evening.
There is morning.
One day.
Got it.
Except… apparently I don’t got it. 😂
Because the more I looked at the individual Hebrew words, the more I realized how many assumptions I was bringing into the word “day.”
First, there’s qara… to call or name.
God has already separated the light from the darkness in verse 4. Now He gives each of them a name.
The light (owr) He calls yowm… Day.
The darkness (choshek) He calls layil… Night.
And this immediately added another piece to the question I was already asking in verse 4.
God doesn’t call the darkness evil.
He calls it Night.
I’m still not ready to say that means the original darkness was good, bad, or completely indifferent. The text still hasn’t told me that.
But God doesn’t eliminate it.
He distinguishes it from the light and gives it a name.
And then we get hayah.
“There was.”
This is the same word I’ve already encountered several times. The earth hayah. God says hayah light… “let there be” light… and there is light.
Now God has distinguished Day and Night, named them, and hayah shows up again:
“There was evening.”
And I can’t help but notice the sequence.
God distinguishes.
God names.
And then what He has distinguished and named is occurring.
Sooo… when God distinguishes something and give it a name… it is.
Then I got to ereb and boqer.
Evening and morning.
And this is where my brain really started going.
Because ereb isn’t the Hebrew word for night… that’s layil.
And boqer isn’t the Hebrew word for Day… that’s yowm.
They’re different words.
Ereb is evening, the period associated with the onset of night.
Boqer is morning or daybreak, associated with the onset of daylight.
So why doesn’t Genesis simply say: “There was Night and there was Day”?
It specifically says: “There was evening and there was morning.”
I don’t know yet.
But I’m putting a giant question mark beside that one.
What does yowm mean in Genesis 1:5?
And THEN I realized yowm appears twice in this one verse.
The first time, God names the LIGHT yowm: Day.
So yowm there is specifically referring to the light/daytime portion because the darkness has its own name: Night.
But then evening happens.
Morning happens.
And yowm appears again.
Yom echad.
One day.
Wait.
The same Hebrew word that was just used as the name for the LIGHT is now being used to describe this larger evening-and-morning unit.
And apparently I’ve been reading right over that my entire life.
Yom echad: “one day” or “the first day”?
Then there’s echad.
Most English translations naturally give us “the first day.”
But echad means “one.”
Yom echad.
One day.
And suddenly I wasn’t reading this merely as God putting a giant #1 beside the first day of creation.
I was reading:
There was evening.
There was morning.
Together, this was one day.
It’s describing “one full day” vs marking “day one”
And THAT is when the entire rabbit hole exploded
How can there be Day and Night before the sun?
Because what exactly is a “day” here?
I’ve always unconsciously brought my own definition with me.
Twenty-four hours.
Midnight to midnight.
One rotation of the earth relative to the sun.
Done.
Except…
WAIT A DANG MINUTE.
There isn’t a sun yet.
The sun doesn’t enter this account until Day 4.
Light exists before the sun.
Day exists before the sun.
Night exists before the sun.
Evening exists before the sun.
Morning exists before the sun.
And Genesis is already describing “one day” before the heavenly lights are introduced to govern Day and Night and mark days, seasons, and years.
That doesn’t automatically mean these creation days were thousands or millions of years long.
But it absolutely means I can’t define yowm as “one rotation of the earth relative to the sun” and pretend that definition came from the Hebrew.
The sun isn’t even here yet.
So now I’m putting another question mark beside something I thought I understood.
How long was this “one day”?
I don’t know.
Yowm itself can refer to daylight, a day, or a broader period of time depending on context.
And Genesis 1:5 actually demonstrates some of that flexibility within the same verse.
So I’m not going to use the word alone to prove a 24-hour day.
And I’m definitely not going to use the word alone to turn the day into millions of years either.
I’m just going to keep watching.
But THEN there’s another thing.
Evening comes first.
“There was evening, and there was morning.”
I’ve always thought of a day as beginning in the morning… or technically midnight because that’s how our calendar works.
Genesis gives me evening first.
And if I track backward through what I’ve read so far, the entire creation account opened in darkness.
Then God created light.
Then He separated the light from the darkness.
Then He named them Day and Night.
And only after all of that do I get:
evening → morning → one day.
Now, I can’t call the darkness of Genesis 1:2 “evening.”
Genesis doesn’t.
Choshek (darkness) and ereb (evening) aren’t the same word.
And I can’t call the creation of light in verse 3 “morning.”
Genesis doesn’t do that either.
Owr (light) and boqer (morning) aren’t the same word.
So I’m not going to force those together just because they fit neatly in my head.
But I am absolutely noticing the order.
Darkness was there.
Light was created.
God distinguished them.
God named them.
Evening occurred.
Morning occurred.
One day.
And something that began unformed, unfilled, and dark now has distinction, names, boundaries, and rhythm.
So far in Genesis, I’m watching God:
create,
move,
speak,
evaluate,
separate,
name…
and now establish rhythm.
I came into Genesis 1:5 thinking I knew exactly what a “day” was.
Five verses in?
I’m putting a question mark beside it and seeing what the rest of Genesis has to say.
READ MY ENTIRE GENESIS SERIES HERE
— Katie
Word & Weekdays
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