What did God create on the first day of creation?
God's first recorded act inside the six days was not to make matter but to make light shine on an earth already lying dark and empty. That raises the questions commentators keep returning to: how could there be light before the sun, was this the origin of the universe, and why does the whole account open with light rather than anything else?
Light at a Word
The first thing God says in the Bible is a command for light, and it takes effect the instant it is spoken. Writers note how short and bare the Hebrew is:
F. B. HoleThe first word recorded as coming from the mouth of God is "Light," for we understand that "Let there be light" is more literally, "Light be!"
There is no process, no delay, no material worked on. The command itself is the whole cause.
William KellyAt the word of God appeared instant activity of light, just before that time inert.
Light Before the Sun
The sun, moon and stars are not set in place until the fourth day, and unbelievers long treated that as an obvious blunder. Commentators answer it simply:
F. B. HoleFor a long time great exception was taken by unbelievers to this statement of verse 5, because the sun does not appear until the fourth day. But the sun is not the only source of light.
Some go further and argue that the physical sun was already there from the start, and that the fourth day only assigned it its role.
William KellyHence we may notice in advance that on the fourth day not a hint is given of creating the physical masses of the sun, moon, and stars. It is there and then no more than setting them in their declared and existing relations to the earth. Their creation belongs in time to Gen. 1:1.
Commentators differ on this detail — some simply say light has other sources, others say the sun existed already — but they agree the record is not confused.
Not the Origin of the Universe
A common assumption is that the six days describe the making of everything. Several writers reject that reading, and insist the first day starts further down the story.
William KellyBut there is not a word in scripture to warrant the strange and hasty assumption that the universe was brought into being in the six days of Gen. 1:3-31... it is out of the power of any on just principles of interpretation to deny that the first day begins with light, and that the first two verses are marked off in their nature, as well as by their expression, from the work of the six days.
On this view the light of day one shines on a ruined scene, not an empty one. Verse three "was not therefore really the signal of creation begun, but of God acting afresh and in detail."
Dividing and Naming
God does two further things that day: He approves the light, and He separates it. The approval is worth pausing on.
F. A. HughesThis was creative power — the prerogative of God Himself; but it also says "God saw the light, that it was good" — the first moral pronouncement of Scripture!
The separation that follows is absolute, not a blending of the two.
F. B. HoleThere was not to be a compromise, a mixture, a sort of vague twilight, but the darkness was for a season to give way completely to light, and so there was a division between them.
Then God names what He has made. It is the Bible's first use of the word "called" — "And God called the light Day," and, as one writer observes, "Day has been its name ever since."
How Long Was That Day
Because the sun is not yet ruling the day, some have stretched the six days into geological ages. The phrase "evening and morning" is treated as the decisive clue against that.
William KellyHere "the evening" and "the morning" should rule out any real question. It can only mean, defined this way, a day of twenty-four hours... The same phrase is carefully used before and after.
One point about the order is easily missed: the day does not begin with the earlier darkness.
J. N. DarbyThere had been pitch darkness; and then it is not that the evening and the morning make a day, for they would not. But after the darkness, which did not count, we get the light, and then the evening and the morning make the day. The pitch darkness did not count for time.
A Picture of Conversion
The New Testament reaches back to this verse to describe what God does in a person. Paul writes that God, "who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6). Writers draw the parallel closely:
Samuel RidoutOver a wrecked life, lying hopeless in gloom that as far as its own efforts are concerned must be eternal, the Spirit of God in brooding love flashes out the knowledge of the presence of God Himself... The light here shows nothing but itself, in which God can find pleasure.
The same two agents work in both scenes — the Spirit moving, and the word spoken.
Summary
- Darkness first. The first day opens on an earth already dark and disordered; light is God's answer to a ruin, not the raw start of the universe.
- Word next. Nothing is worked on or built; God speaks, and light is instantly active — "Light be!"
- Light given. God does not create the sun that day; He gives light itself, and pronounces it good — Scripture's first moral judgement.
- Division follows. Light and darkness are separated, not blended, and each is named: Day and Night.
- Same order in you. The Spirit brooding and the word spoken made light shine then; the same God "has shone in our hearts" now.