Lives and Legacies: First Ladies of the Bible. Cheryl Rhodes

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      In verse 3, God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. That was the evening and the morning of the first day (Gen. 1:1–6). The day began at evening, sunset. Jews continue to keep that original time design, evening as the beginning of the day, to this very day.

      A second consideration I’d like to share with you is that those of an Eastern mind-set, Hebrews in the time the Scripture was written, will tell you that Westerners think too narrowly of creation. You ask “how;” they ask “why.”

      So I’ll put more emphasis on the “why” aspects of creation, because those of us from the East do. As you listen, you’ll hear that every created thing was ordered and given purpose and relationship. That includes you!

      Now we’ll go to day four. God returns to His creation of day one—light. God said, “Let there be lights in the heaven to divide the day from the night; let them function for signs, for seasons, for days, and for years, and to give light upon the earth.” And so it was. God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also, to give light, to rule, and to divide the light from the darkness. God pronounced it suitable; that was day four, evening and morning (Gen. 1:14–20).

      Notice the order, purpose, and relationship between the lights and the day and night. The lights were to divide and signal. You might also be interested to know that the seasons, days, and years in Genesis 1 suggest holy seasons, holy days, and holy years yet to be identified.

      On day seven, God would ordain the first Holy Day. Holy Seasons and Years, like Holy Days, were/are for remembering what God has done and for anticipating what God has said He will do. The means of signaling these days, seasons, and years were put into place on day four, while only the first holy day, Sabbath, was established in this first week. The others would come much later.

      On day two, God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” So the firmament came into existence, dividing the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. God called the firmament “sky” (Gen. 1:6–9).

      Ever wonder about the waters above the sky? The “canopy theory” proposes that the waters above the sky were an ice canopy connected to the earth’s poles, which dissolved in the flood. Such a canopy1 would have kept the sun’s rays from reaching the earth’s surface unfiltered. Those who propose this theory suggest that this would have slowed the aging process of all things, perhaps preventing the fermentation of fruit. Could explain a lot, don’t you think? Noah’s drunkenness may have been the result of this “new” fermentation process after the canopy melted.

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