Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Genesis · About this commentary
Day one: let there be light
Genesis 1:3-5
3 God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. · WEB
God creates by speaking, evaluates what he has made, and closes the day with a formula that fixes what kind of period is being counted.
God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. The pattern that governs the whole chapter is set in one verse: God speaks, and the thing exists. No effort is described, no material is worked, and no resistance is met. Ten times in this chapter the formula God said introduces a new act, and the correspondence between the command and the result is exact.
That is why the rest of Scripture treats creation as the plainest demonstration of God's power. A God who has to construct is limited by his material; a God who speaks is limited by nothing. By Yahweh's word, the heavens were made Psalms 33:6, and he spoke, and it was done Psalms 33:9.
Then an evaluation: God saw the light, and saw that it was good. The judgment is God's own, and it recurs six times before the chapter ends with very good. It is worth noticing what is being called good. Not a spiritual condition and not an idea — light, water, land, plants, animals, bodies. Whatever else Scripture will say about the world's later corruption, its original verdict on physical creation is favorable, and no reading that treats matter as inherently base can be squared with this chapter.
God then divided the light from the darkness and named both. Naming, in this book, is what someone with authority does — the man will name the animals a chapter later — and God names the largest things himself.
The day closes with the formula that will close five more: There was evening and there was morning, the first day. Three things about it are worth stating plainly. It describes an ordinary day, with the two boundaries a day has. It is numbered, and numbers in a series like this count units of one kind. And it is repeated without variation six times, which is how a writer marks a rhythm he expects to be heard.
The question of how light exists before the sun is asked honestly and the text answers it in part. Light is not the sun; the sun is a light-bearer, made on the fourth day and set in place to rule and to mark time. That God can supply light without it is not a difficulty this book feels — the last book of Scripture describes a city that needs neither sun nor moon, because God is its light Revelation 21:23. The first thing made is the first thing Scripture says God is 1 John 1:5.
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