On the Words of Scripture: 'There was evening and there was morning, one day' (complete)

If the divine Scriptures were read simply, the reading of any chapter would never be misunderstood by anyone, but would be received unanimously, piously and rightly, as they hold together. Philonic disputation would cease, syllogistic speech would cease, every superstitious invention would cease; nor would a dark conference ever be found in any man. All would think one thing, agree with one another and profess the same, as the most lucid reading declares itself. For our dear friend put a question to us, whether the whole world has its own proper hours or not. “In short,” he says, “I say that if it is the first hour here, the whole world would have the first hour. For it seems absurd to me to hear it said that different hours obtain in the four parts of the earth. And I ask, since all parts are habitable, how can it be proved to me that all men do not have one hour? And I say: when it is day here, show me in what part you assert that it is night, when all the regions of heaven are lit up by day. For Moses taught us nothing else in the book of Genesis than that day was day for the whole world, and that night, as night, held the whole world in darkness.” So, friend, if what you have said suffices to state the question, I ask you to grant this patiently and hear from us what is true; not so that you may detect human inventions, but rather that you may approve divine sayings. Hence, if the reading is found to have authority, you must grant us room to speak, so that you may learn more plainly how most blessed Moses briefly signified day and night. For Solomon too teaches us, saying: “Your good spirit is in all things; therefore you correct by degrees those who go astray, and in what they sin you admonish them by speaking, so that, leaving their ignorance, they may believe in the words of God.” For all Scripture inspired by the Spirit of God, the apostle Paul says, needs interpretation. For Apollos too was very powerful in the Scriptures and fervent in spirit; and yet Aquila and Priscilla took him aside and set forth to him the way of the Lord more accurately. For the wise are easily corrected; for the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.

Let us set out, then, each thing that the reading of Genesis teaches. But it would be long to discourse on the things said above; let us leave aside disputing about heaven and earth, darkness and the abyss, water and spirit, since it is not yet the time to say anything of these, but rather to answer this man and satisfy him on the question proposed. It is true that darkness possessed the whole world, as the reading declares in the text above. For it was said thus: “Let there be light, and there was light.” The wise ask where the light was made. For darkness was not substantial, as the philosophers say, nor was there some material shaping in it: it is nothing. But far be it from us to agree with them in anything, since divine Scripture says that God created darkness and made heaven. What is made by God, then, is believed to be substantial. Hence, if it is substantial, darkness was not reduced to nothing when light was made. Nor were light and darkness mixed together, because both are substances, which are contrary to each other even today, as hot to cold or sweetness to bitterness; but when they are tempered with each other, they are recognized to be necessary to each other. Let cavilling cease, then, if we have said that they are contrary in substance, yet necessary in the creation of what is born and for rest from all works. We have shown, however, that when light was made darkness was not taken away; rather Scripture teaches that it was driven into one part, that is, condensed in half the globe, so that the light made might illuminate half of the world. For the light of the world, which was made so as to possess the whole globe, is not God's substance. There is another light, which is true, which can illuminate the whole world, of which the Evangelist says: “It is the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world.” The true light, then, illuminates the whole world, because darkness gives way to its author, as the sun too will be darkened by the true light and covered with darkness. But that light, which is not the true light, could not, or rather should not, illuminate the whole world at once from its height, lest the day be judged fixed all at once, rather than established by the moments of the hours in a swift course. For the weakness of the creature appears in this, that it cannot surround the whole world; and therefore even today it is seen to travel through it by parts.

But if the light possessed the whole globe, it would by no means show any hour in the day; if it illuminated the whole world, there would be nothing for it to travel through. According to the reasoning we have set out, we shall be able to understand rightly the prophet Moses when he says: “And God separated the light from the darkness.” What is it to separate, if not to make a distance between them? And if he set a distance and one against the other, and decreed that they be divided, so that he called the light day and the darkness night, we now hear one thing named from another. But why was another name not acceptable, if what was first announced sufficed, so that afterwards he should call it day, as though it had come into his mind? Far be it from us not to ask why, the name already given remaining, it is called day. What follows certainly meant to enclose a space of twelve hours. For even today, if a day is called the Lord's day, it is not defined without its proper hours. When you say “day”, then, you set a defined number of hours up to evening. So my lord Moses says that the light was called day, so that we might recognize that the daily usage was not named without the office of twelve hours. Then he goes on: “And there was evening, and there was morning, one day.” And if he names evening, and afterwards says that the day was made, he designates the completed hours of that making. For Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes asks: “What is it that has been made? The very thing that will be made; and what was is the very thing that is to be.”

So, friend, if today the day is defined in this way, why should we not believe the prophet who says that what is done today was done in the beginning: that there is nothing new under the sun, nothing added and nothing diminished? Evening lasts until morning, filling up the hours of night, and so it is called one defined day, in which the morning is not said to belong to the first day but is found to be the beginning of the second. Now we ask whether our Lord worked by day or by night. Certainly, if by day, that morning is judged not to belong to the first day, since the firmament of heaven is commanded to be made in it. And if the firmament was made on the second day, the morning was shown to belong to the second day. For a balance of day and night had been fixed; for this reason it was called “one day” in number. Again Scripture says: “Let the water be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear”, which he soon commanded to sprout grass for pasture according to its kind, and fruit-bearing trees; and in these “there was evening and there was morning, the third day.” If, then, you take that morning as belonging to the third day, why does Scripture say: “Let there be two lights in the firmament of heaven, to shine upon the earth at the beginning of day and night, to divide between day and night, and to be for signs, for days and times and years”? No man who knows the law will agree with you that the sun and moon were made on the third day.

Perhaps, if I ask you, you will answer that they were made on the fourth day, and you will contend that that morning belongs to the third day. If that morning had truly belonged to the third day, our forebears would never have professed that the sun and moon were made on the fourth day. And if they were made on the fourth day, that morning belongs not to the third day but to the fourth, in which the sun and moon and the rest were made. Finally, they divide between day and night in their beginnings. For their author so balanced them that they hold and run through an equal space of the world; not that, their office fulfilled, they should have a place to rest, but rather they run without ceasing within their bounds. For what the sun travels through in a year, the moon is known to run through in thirty days. Travelling the circle of the globe, they returned to the point from which they had set out. They did not pause, then, when they had run the whole circle; or else show me that it is written, and I will be quiet. But you do not show it, because you do not find it, as Solomon says: “The sun rises and the sun sets, and returns to its place. Rising, it goes toward the south, and circling it goes round to the north.” If you think the sun sets, give us an account of how it returns to its place. If, then, your mind shrinks from inventing falsehoods, believe Solomon when he says that the sun, rising, goes toward the south, so that, circling, it reaches the north: “For circling round and round the spirit travels, and the spirit returns on its circuits.” What could we argue more plainly, when the prophet has outlined our question in a few words: that it is the spirit which, circling round and round, unceasingly travels the whole globe? So one day is defined and passes into another morning; and for this reason the lights were established for days, months and years.

Satisfy yourself on the rest, and agree with our forebears, who handed down what we have recalled above: that this light does not hold the whole globe but half of it, and therefore wherever the sun looks, there day and hours come to be. So, as it travels through the space over which it is carried, it changes the hours. If this is true, wherever it has become morning, morning cannot remain there long, because as the sun walks to other places the hours always change, and so evening is reached; and what follows, in the office of night, is filled up by the hours. But when we see the morning rise, we recognize the failing of darkness; and when evening comes, the day suffers its setting. For so he divided the regions of heaven between day and night, that in whatever part the sun has made its step, there is morning; and likewise wherever the moon has travelled, it is recognized as evening, which is said to belong to the following day. For it is foolish to hear that night was made first, with the evening, and that morning arose afterwards. If evening had been made first, our lawgiver would not have hesitated before anyone to proclaim that night as one in the number of nights. No one who has what is first and principal scorns to proclaim it, and then names what follows. If, then, nothing of the kind is found among men, how is it reckoned by you that a morning made later should be called “one day”? Why do you not profess what you read first: that light was made and called day, and afterwards the darkness was called night? Night, then, was not made before day. So too you ought not to believe that evening came first, but understand that the morning of the day was made first.

The morning about which Scripture was silent, reason lays open from the fact that God commanded light to be made. For what could the rising of light show, if not that it marked the morning? A day could not be named apart from the morning; and we rightly say that God, when he called the light day, enclosed the morning within it. For when the day ended, evening began to arise, which, working through the whole night, would reach the morning of the second day, in which the firmament was made. And although we have discussed the third and fourth days, in which he fashioned the sun and moon, let us ask more fully on which day man was made, the fifth or the sixth, so as to find whether evening comes before morning. For God said: “Let us make man according to our image and likeness.” And God made man; according to the image of God he made him; male and female he made them; and he gave them every plant for food. “And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day.” Hence, if that morning belongs to the sixth day, man was made on the fifth day. For if he was made on the sixth day, it is proved that that morning belongs to the seventh day, on which God rested. If not, show me where the works of the sixth day are, by which all the things he said were made on the sixth day were completed. On the fifth day I find that the waters brought forth creeping things and birds, not man, who was made from the earth together with the four-footed creatures and the beasts of the earth. And if man was made with these on the fifth day, we find neither what the waters brought forth nor what was completed on the sixth day. And how does Scripture say that God rested on the seventh day from all his works, when I find that after man and the things made with man, all the work that God had begun to do was completed? So if man and the things mentioned above were made on the fifth day, we find all things completed on the fifth day, and should conclude that on the sixth day God rested from all his works. But if you understand the evening as coming after the creation of the waters, you will find not the beginnings of the fourth day but the beginnings of the fifth night. If this is true, the morning named after the evening does not belong to the fifth day but to the sixth, because Scripture teaches us that man was made in it. Hence, after the making of man it says that evening was made, and morning, which is truly the beginning of the seventh day. For in that very morning God rested from all his works which he had begun to make, not in the evening that followed the sixth day. Now, friend, look at the reading more plainly, and satisfy your mind that night cannot be put before day, nor evening before morning, in which the act and work of the day is shown to be fixed, and so the evening that follows is named. Finally, after the evening of the sixth day Scripture ceased to mention it, as it did the morning, which the prophet openly and clearly declared to be the seventh day itself. If it is not so, show me now, beloved, the seventh evening, so that the morning too may follow it. And if you do not find it, believe the reading that the seventh day is the very one which, after the evening, is called morning.