Day 4

DAY 4 - Mesozoic[Late Cretaceous] (100-66 Ma)

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. (Genesis 1:14-19 ESV)

Premise: Genesis 1:1-2:4 records a divinely-revealed history of the Earth describing some of God's miraculous interventions by which He transformed an uninhabitable and uninhabited world into a habitat in which human beings could thrive. God creates each human being as His image bearers and uniquely endows them with an eternal, morally-obligated spirit.

Chronology

The ICS formally defines the Late Cretaceous Epoch as spanning 100.5-66 Ma and includes it as the last Epoch of the Mesozoic. Important changes to the Earth during this time could justify labeling this the Neozoic.

100-66 Ma: current best fit for what could be called the Neozoic Yom (Day 4). 

Critical Transformations: Slowing rate of the Earth's rotation approached 23.5 hours per day at the start and reached about 23.8 hours per day near the end. Human circadian rhythms can be entrained to a cycle of 23.5 hours or longer. This is the time when the Sun, Moon, and stars began to operate in a way that human being would benefit from.

Termination: K-Pg extinction event which triggered a global winter. 

A Pivot Point

The Fourth Day of Creation is in many ways a pivot point for the interpretation of the whole creation account in Genesis 1:1 through Genesis 2:4.

Some expositors will see in Genesis 1:14-19 (Day 4) the initial creation of the sun, moon, and stars, determining that the source of light referred to in the context of Day 1 was from a temporary source other than the sun yet providing its equivalent benefit of light, heat, and relative location, not to mention its gravitational influence.  In other words, God created something exactly like the sun, but which was not the real sun, and then swapped it out on Day 4 for the real sun.  This position is part of classic Young Earth Creationism.  The mode of this interpretation is to take each textual expression in as literal a manner as possible and propose scenarios that correspond as concretely as possible.  By failing to recognize the genre and literary devices employed by the author, this manner of interpretation also fails the test of William of Occam, known as Occam's Razor: in explaining a thing, no more assumptions should be made than necessary.  It was originally stated this way: "Entities should not be multiplied without necessity."  In this case, two suns instead of one are needed to support the classic Young Earth position.

Other expositors will draw a parallel between the events of Day 1 and the events of Day 4, with Day 4 providing the fulfillment of Day 1 decrees.  In this view, the classic Literary Framework model, the days of creation are not sequential but rather descriptive.  God started with that which was formless and void and created day and night, the heavens, the land, and the seas, and he also He filled each form with corresponding creations: sun and moon, the stars and birds, the plants and animals, and the fish and sea monsters.  Day 4 becomes the parallel of Day 1, 5 of 2, and 6 of 3.  The lesson in that view is that God created a well-ordered world.  The mode of interpretation of the passages is to draw out a wholistic view of God as creator along with theological implications without getting hung up on strict correspondence to historical events or scientific sequences of events.  The deficiency of this view, and why it does not satisfy all investigators, is that the parallels are not as clean as they might first appear.  Day 4 mentions lights and heavens, so it is not a parallel to just Day 1, but also a reference to Day 2.  Day 2 mentions the waters above and the waters below which are viewed as filled on the Day 5 with the birds and fish.  But the focus of Day 2 is really the heavens, and the seas that are filled on Day 5 are mentioned on Day 3, as is the land which is populated with animals.  Fixing the parallels exposes the fact that a more complex literary structure exists to Genesis 1:1-2:4 than the mere parallelism of the classic Literary Framework.

The Ages of Joy Creation Model learns from and lands between these two views.  On the one hand, the text of Genesis 1 is considered to reflect an historical, sequential timeline of God's creative work.  On the other hand, it is also seen as a literary work employing devices including metaphor and epic regression to communicate a narrative of such grand scope that common terms fail to convey reality when taken overly literally.

Examining the Text and Discerning the Literary Intent of the Author

Here is the text of the Fourth Day of Creation as rendered in the ESV translation.

Genesis 1:14-19
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

First we examine the decree introduced by And God said:

• Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night
• Let them (the lights) be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years
• Let them (the lights) be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth

The closing bracket of the decree comes with the words And it was so.

What makes this passage challenging is that on Day One, God separated the light from the darkness, called the light Day, and called the darkness Night.  God also said "Let there be light", and there was light.  This seems like a total repeat and is why Young Earth Creationists propose that God had made some kind of temporary stand-in for the sun and moon, and on Day 4 was replacing the stand-ins with the real ones.  However, nowhere does the Bible talk about temporary stand-ins for the sun and moon, so that view is pure conjecture. The Bible does refer to temporary stand-ins in other contexts, like the sacrificial system being a temporary stand-in until Christ provided the ultimate sacrifice.  However, applying that to Genesis 1 is merely a guess at best.  It's an attempt to reason by analogy, where no clear connection between the corresponding examples exists.  Perhaps God created a temporary sun and moon and then replaced them by the current, also temporary, sun and moon.  There is no explanation provided as to why God would have done so, no explicit statement that He actually did so, and no physical evidence from the sun, moon, or earth that indicates that He did so.

Going back to the text, we also observe three other elements:

1. The mention of heavens, which were not referred to on Day 1 (Genesis 1:3-5)
2. The reversal of the order versed Day 1: separation then illumination instead of illumination then separation
3. The bracketing between the separation and the illumination of the purpose statement: for signs and for seasons and for days and years

 Restatement, reversal and bracketing are strong indications that the passage is employing literary devices to make a point and convey truth.  This underscores that the author's intent goes beyond a bare description of sequential events and is powerfully serving the purpose of conveying a rich depth of meaning.

The author appears to be employing a literary technique similar to epic regression in which the current dramatic moment is tied back to earlier events by referring to them in reverse chronological order.  In other words, the author walks the reader back to the beginning to put the current moment in a meaningful context.

Interpretation

"Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens" - this phrase tells us that the lights appeared during Day 2 in the expanse of the heavens.  That was not made clear during the description of Day 2 because that was not the author's focus for that passage, but here we are being caught up on that important detail.  Some interpreters will insist that this phrase, made in the context of Day 4, should be taken to mean that the Sun, Moon, and stars remained obscured by clouds until the Fourth Day.  However, if the author is using epic regression, then he is actually putting what comes next, the purpose statement, in an epic context which means he is purposefully referring to a past event, not a concurrent event.

Next we have the purpose statement, which I will refer to again in a moment.  It is bracketed by the preceding and following statements.  Bracketing highlights the most important concept and is a common literary device.  It is the purpose that is fulfilled in Day 4.

"Let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth." - this is the closing bracket which follows the purpose statement.  This refers back to the very first decree, "Let there be light" which was immediately fulfilled "and there was light".  We have been walked back through Day 2 all the way to the beginning of Day 1.  Since there is very clearly light on Day 1, this further justifies the claim that the appearance in the heavens of the sun, moon, and stars occurred on Day 2.  The purpose statement is bracketed first by a past event and finally by an even earlier past event.

Now, let's examine the purpose statement:

• Let them (the lights) be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years

Up until Day 4, the sun, moon, and stars where marking day and night by appearing in the heavens and shining over their dominions.  Now the lights begin to serve as signs, to mark seasons, and to determine length of days and length of years.  Beyond illumination, the lights are for marking time.

Unpacking the Post-decree Text

After putting the decree in proper context, we can make sense of the rest of the passage.

And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.

In the Day 4 narrative, the author carefully refers to the greater light and the lesser light.  These are clearly the sun and the moon, respectively.  However, by not labeling them as such, the author is associating them with the light on Day 1, as opposed to suggesting that they are some new sources of light.

God also made the stars.  There is an oblique reference to morning stars in Job 38:7 presenting the stars as being present at the beginning of creation.  We furthermore observe from nature that stars are of many varying ages, including some that are just now forming.  Therefore stars cannot be said to have all been created in the narrow confines of Day 4.  As we observe, the stars are not an explicit part of the Day 4 decrees.  We are simply told that God is their creator and apparently authored the on-going process by which stars are formed.

17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness.

The author accomplishes at least two objectives in v. 17-18b.  First, he recapitulates the content of the decree for emphasis and he makes it clear that the decree is not only issued by God, but also carried out by God himself.  God is not ordering the activities of lesser gods to carry out His will.  He decrees and He accomplishes.  This pattern is also observed in the plagues of Egypt in Exodus c. 7-11.  It is God who decrees and then God who brings about.

Secondly, the author grounds the activity in context by again walking back the narrative to the beginning, relating it to the over all epic.  It is reiterated that God set the lights in the expanse of the heavens.  As such, the first appearance of the sun, moon, and stars would be expected on the Second Day when God separated the waters above from the waters below and established the firm shield of the atmosphere over the Earth.  The author restates the purpose of the lights to illuminate the Earth as described in verse 3, let there be light, which of course, is Day 1.  Now focused again on Day 1 the order of events is seen in reverse from Day 4:  in v. 18 we have mention of day and night and then of separation; in v. 4-5 we have day and night, proceeded by separation.  The author continually leads the reader back toward the beginning.

v18b And God saw that it was good.

We finish verse 18 with the statement And God saw that it was good.  This pronouncement completes the action that had begun on Day 1 (v3-4a): 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good.  On Day 1, only the light was declared good, even though the separation into light and dark and the dominions of day and night were established.  By the end of Day 4, the whole enterprise is declared good. It is at this time that the full purpose, including the marking of signs, seasons, days and years is manifest.

19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

This repeated phraseology accomplishes at least two purposes.  First, it is an obvious signal to the reader to be on the lookout for literary devices being employed to bear some of the weight of the epic narrative.  Secondly, it sustains the motif of a sequence of unfolding events that occur within time boxes.  The colophon in Genesis 2:4 that summarizes the epic narrative uses the word generations.

v2:4

• These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created
• in the day (Hebrew yom meaning time) that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

v1:1

• In the beginning,  God created the heavens and the earth.

We can see that the first clause of v2:4 summaries the entire account with its many generations and the second clause of v2:4 is the chiastic parallel to v1:1, which wraps the entire narrative into a single poetic epic narrative.

Length of Day

Until the Fourth Day, no assertion can be made as to the length of a day or night.  One cannot say anything from the text about "ordinary days" or 24-hour days.  Those concepts were not yet fulfilled and the terms ordinary, twenty-four, or hour are not used in the text, nor are the words rotation or axis.  What we do see in the context of Day 1 is the separation of light and darkness.  This separation is much like that of the Day 2 separation of the waters above from the waters below.  The word separation implies a spacial difference.  The Hebrew word bên is utilized which is a preposition translated as a space between on the studylight.org Interlinear Bible.  In other words, part of the Earth is illuminated and that illuminated portion is designated day, while another portion is not illuminated and is in darkness, a condition called night.  Even in ancient times it was understood that the sun did not disappear at night but merely went elsewhere.  It is always night somewhere and always day somewhere else.  Day and night are conditions, not time periods, in their most fundamental functioning.  Thus we see that the sun, moon, and stars are not marking ordinary time until Day 4 and so we cannot make statements regarding time periods for Days 1, 2 and 3.

An additional observation should be made.  Psalm 90 is written by Moses and reflects on the creation of the world and the nature of God's eternality.

1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.
2 Before the mountains were brought forth,
   or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
   from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
3 You return man to dust
   and say, “Return, O children of man!”
4 For a thousand years in your sight
   are but as yesterday when it is past,
   or as a watch in the night.

Here we see that God's existence from everlasting to everlasting is compared to the long stretch of time before which the mountains were brought forth and the earth was formed (verse 2).  A thousand years is compared to a single day, or even just a small fraction of a day, in God's sight (verse 4).  From Psalm 90, and our examination of Genesis 1, we should anticipate that Days 1, 2, and 3 will have a duration that challenges the imagination to comprehend.  The period of work during which God wrought His creation over these days is manifold thousands of years in duration, more than can be easily comprehended by a mere mortal.

A parallel can be drawn between God's work days and man's work days, underscoring that man is created in God's image.  However, man is not God, and therefore we cannot draw an equivalence.

Exodus 20:11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.

The six days of God's work can be no more equivalenced to man's days than can God's rest be equivalenced to man's sleep.  An illustrative parallel is employed by the author for instruction, but a misguided equivocation by the reader leads to many complications.  Man is but dust.  God is everlasting.  Man's days are a mere moment in God's sight.  God's days are like eternity in man's sight.  A very patient man can watch the grass grow, but only God can watch the mountains grow.  We must understand who we are and who God is and the vastness that separates us.  Then we can marvel that God condescended to become man like us to save us from our sins.

Using Scripture to Interpret Nature

Having started with Scripture, we can now apply the understanding that God provides through the Bible to show us His perspective on natural history.

Length of Days and Years

Interestingly, the rotation rate of the Earth has been demonstrated to slow down over time.  The initial rotation rate is thought to have been 6 hours per day, in other words, staggeringly faster than modern times.  Over the eons it has slowed gradually due to the pull of the moon's gravity interacting with the tidal forces of the oceans.  There came a point in time when the rotation rate of the Earth finally approached 24 hours per day.  The rotation rate is still slowing, but  so gradually that it is imperceptible, though not unmeasurable, over the course of human history.  The length of time for the Earth to revolve around the sun has stayed relatively constant, keeping the Earth at a safe distance from the Sun.  Therefore, the length in days of the Earth's year is largely dominated by the rotation rate of the Earth.  When the rotation rate approached 24 hours, the year length approached 365 days.

Seasons

The Earth's climate has not always been seasonal.  When land plants first appeared, the continents where primarily gathered into one land mass with the global ocean surrounding it.  The climate was usually warmer with little ice.  Over time the continents split and drifted and became arranged similar to their current locations.  As this happened, the Earth's climate changed.  Each of the major continents formed and the oceans we know today, the Pacific, Atlantic, and the Indian, formed.  At this time, the Earth's climate became seasonal in nature.

Fruit Trees Appear

There is another important transition mentioned in Genesis 1.  By the end of Day 3, God had created flowering plants, specifically fruit trees.  From that time on, fruit trees have increasingly multiplied and spread throughout the whole earth.  The fossil record bears witness to the appearance and then subsequent proliferation of flowering plants, including fruit trees.

Timing of the Fourth Day

Here is an abridged (for space) treatment of the relevant passages from Genesis 1:

9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so.
11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so.
13 And there was evening and morning, the third day.
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so.
19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
 20 And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.”

Reading Genesis 1, we would expect the following sequence of events:

1. The Third Day
1. Formation of the Continents and Oceans
2. Appearance and Proliferation of Fruit  Trees
2. The Fourth Day
1. The Earth's climate becomes seasonal
2. The Earth has 24-hour days and 365-day years
3. The Fifth Day
1. Dramatic Proliferation of Birds
2. Dramatic Proliferation of Swarming Sea Life

Sifting through the scientific literature, we find the Fourth Day closely aligned with a time period call the Late Cretaceous.  This time period is the last hurrah for the dinosaurs.  They had ruled the Earth for countless generations, but their days were marked.  Just prior to the Late Cretaceous, the Great Angiosperm Radiation event is observed in the fossil record.  Fruit trees, many that are very similar to today's varieties, appear suddenly in the fossils record and go on to eventually dominate the landscape.  At that time, the modern Continents and Oceans had formed and the Earth was looking very, well, Earth-like.  That is, it looked familiar on a global scale.  That brought with it the kind of seasonality and climate that we have come to expect.  Although warmer than today, Earth was no longer a hothouse from pole to pole.

So the Fourth Day begins with the Late Cretaceous.  Coincident with this, the Earth's rotation rate had slowed to 24-hours per day.  The year would now contain twelve months as the moon had settled into a farther out orbit.  The length of the year, measured in days, approached what we experience now.

The Fourth Day ended dramatically when an astroid slammed into the Earth, forming the Chicxulub Crater and wiping out the dinosaurs.  This was the Evening of the Fourth Day - a time of harvesting the Earth.  All that survived until Morning constituted the produce of God's tending.

On the Fifth Day, from those survivors arose a tremendous proliferation of bird species and all the teleost swarming fish that fill the oceans today.  The giant aquatic reptiles were gone; the whales and dolphins arose to sport in ships' wakes (Psalm 104:26).

In geologic terms, the Late Cretaceous is dated to 100 million to 65 million years ago.  In sequence of events terms, it lies between the appearance of fruit trees in the fossil record and the dramatic radiation of bird species and schooling fish in the fossil record.

A Word About Dinosaurs and Plants

Dinosaurs are not mentioned specifically in the Bible because they only lived during the Third and Fourth Days of Creation.  Even the kinds of birds and mammals that lived during the time of the dinosaurs went extinct.  God created new kinds that we interact with today.  However many of the plants created on the Third Day did not go extinct and are still with us.  This explains why God tells us about the plants on the Third Day, but not the animals.  Genesis 1 explains the origin of the life on Earth as relevant to humans living today (and, of course, at the time it was written).  While most Day 3 and Day 4 animals are now extinct, having been replace by Day 5 and Day 6 animals, many of the Day 3 plants are not.  While fruit trees expanded in territory during Day 4, there was no emergence of new kinds of plants comparable to what occurred during Day 3.  The Biblical text's ability to shed light on the geologic record is astounding until you accept that God the Creator inspired its content.

Summary

Genesis 1:1 through 2:4 may be viewed as an epic narrative that employs poetic literary devices to empower the text to convey the grand scope and sequence of creation history while documenting the key transformative miracles that the Creator worked in preparing the world for human habitation and the unfolding of His grand salvation plan.  An overly literalistic approach to the text results in an increasingly complex unpacking of the meaning, such as requiring a temporary sun-like creation, and leads to utter irreconcilability with scientifically discerned natural history.  On the other hand, reducing the narrative to a mere literary framework that divorces it from any historicity deprives us from seeing the text as a true origin story communicating how and when God created all that we observe.

The proper interpretation of the text of the Fourth Day of creation and its relationship to the others Days is pivotal for building a correct understanding.  The Day 4 account includes a decree that is fulfilled on Day 4 and which is put in context by recounting and linking to earlier preparatory works through parallelism and epic regression.

By understanding the text as a grand epic that employs poetry to bridge the gap between the smallness of man and the vastness of God's works and by examining those works in nature carefully, we can realize that Genesis 1:1-2:4 bears powerful witness that the text could only have been humanly authored under inspiration from God Himself.  Properly understood, the Bible opens with an incredible testimony that the rest of Scripture documents the true works of the true God.

Notes on Circadian Rhythm

With strong light, humans can entrain to 23.5 hours or 24.65 hours, per https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1934931/

But according to this study, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC61161/ , 23.5 hours and 24.6 hours are near the limits of human circadian entrainment.

This study, https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(16)30333-5.pdf, claims that "Range of entrainment: clocks can entrain to non-24-h zeitgeber cycles but only within given limits. The human circadian clock, for example, cannot entrain to 22 h or 26 h cycles.

The claim that humans can entrain to 25 hours is faulty: "Early research into circadian rhythms suggested that most people preferred a day closer to 25 hours when isolated from external stimuli like daylight and timekeeping. However, this research was faulty because it failed to shield the participants from artificial light." per https://www.circadiansleepdisorders.org/info/cycle_length.php and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10381883/

Two premises:

1) 23.5 hours is near the minimum of what the human circadian rhythm can entrain to with normal daylight exposure.
2) the rotation rate of the Earth was about 23.5 hours 100 ma.