Day 4 Devotion – How Long is a Day?

God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day. Genesis 1:5

Figure 1. The Strong's concordance shows that the Hebrew word for day is "yom" and has a Strongs number of 3117 associated with it.

I know the first question many people want an answer to is “Were the six days of creation literal 24 hour days?” I prefer to be objective and give some different arguments and let you decide for yourself. I do not like to impose my views on someone when the topic is so controversial. Young Earth creationists claim that this is the only way to read the text. “It is obvious, just look at how it talks about night and day”. If you do a Hebrew word study you will see the word is yom which literally means hot. Yom can refer to just the daylight hours when it is warmest outside. It can also refer to a 24 hour day. But, sometimes it is used to represent longer periods of time and is translated as time or season. A good analogy would be like saying “back in my day I remember collecting glass soda bottles and turning them back in at the gas station for a refund”. A great example of this is:

So they cried out to the LORD; and He put darkness between you and the Egyptians, brought the sea upon them, and covered them. And your eyes saw what I did in Egypt. Then you dwelt in the wilderness a long time. Joshua 24:7

Figure 2. The word translated as season or long time in Joshua 24:7 is yom and the Strong's number is 3117.

The word yom, which is singular in the Hebrew here, is translated as long time. From the context we see that this long time is the wilderness wandering of Israel, which was 40 years. So, in this instance one day is equal to 40 years. The major thing I want to point out is that there is room for either interpretation. I personally am an old earth creationist (aka Day/Age Theorist), which means I accept the scientifically measured dates for the earth and that the six days in genesis represent long periods of time. There is not as much conflict with this view. Obviously, if you tell most people you believe these days are six-24 hour periods and the earth is only 6000 years old you are looked upon as an uneducated, religious nut.