Genesis 1:14 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Genesis 1:14
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
a day (as the warm hours) · conjunction + preposition + noun, common masculine plural absolute
years
וְשָׁנִֽיםve.sha.Nim
H8141
a year (as a revolution of time) · conjunction + noun, common masculine plural absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Psalms 104:19-20 He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down.
Deuteronomy 4:19 And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shoulde…
Psalms 74:16-17 The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun.
Psalms 148:3 Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light.
Jeremiah 31:35 Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which di…
Psalms 136:7-9 To him that made great lights: for his mercy endureth for ever:
Psalms 8:3-4 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
Psalms 148:6 He hath also stablished them for ever and ever: he hath made a decree which shall not pass.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Genesis 1:14-19
This is the history of the fourth day's work, the creating of the sun, moon, and stars, which are here accounted for, not as they are in themselves and in their own nature, to satisfy the curious, but as they are in relation to this earth, to which they serve as lights; and this is enough to furnish us with matter for praise and thanksgiving. Holy Job mentions this as an instance of the glorious power of God, that by the Spirit he hath garnished the heavens (Job 26:13); and here we have an account of that garniture which is not only so much the beauty of the upper world, but so much the blessing of this lower; for though heaven is high, yet has it respect to this earth, and therefore should…
FOURTH DAY. (Gen 1:14-19)
let there be lights in the firmament--The atmosphere being completely purified, the sun, moon, and stars were for the first time unveiled in all their glory in the cloudless sky; and they are described as "in the firmament" which to the eye they appear to be, though we know they are really at vast distances from it.
Adam Clarke on Genesis 1:14
And God said, Let there be lights, etc. - One principal office of these was to divide between day and night. When night is considered a state of comparative darkness, how can lights divide or distinguish it? The answer is easy: The sun is the monarch of the day, which is the state of light; the moon, of the night, the state of darkness. The rays of the sun, falling on the atmosphere, are refracted and diffused over the whole of that hemisphere of the earth immediately under his orb; while those rays of that vast luminary which, because of the earth's smallness in comparison of the sun, are diffused on all sides beyond the earth, falling on the opaque disc of the moon, are reflected back upon…
And God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven,.... In the upper part of it, commonly called the starry heaven: some writers, both Jewish and Christian, and even modern astronomers, understand this only of the appearance of them, and not of the formation of them; they suppose they were made on the first day, but did not appear or shine out so clearly and visibly as now on the fourth day: but it seems rather, that the body of fire and light produced on the first day was now distributed and formed into several luminous bodies of sun, moon, and stars, for these were "from light"; lights produced from that light, or made out of it; or were instruments of communicating and lett…
The Church Fathers
Men ought to have been astonished and amazed not only at the arrangement of the sun and moon but also at the well-ordered movements of the stars and their unfettered courses and the timely rising of each of them; how some are signs of summer, others of winter; how some indicate the time for sowing, others the times of navigation.
We should not interpret the signs as something other than times. For Scripture is now speaking of these times that by their distinct intervals convey to us that eternity remains immutable above them so that time might appear as a sign, that is, as a vestige of eternity. Likewise, when it adds, "and for days and for years," it shows of what times it is speaking. These days come about by the revolution of the fixed stars, and from this it becomes obvious when the sun completes its starry course in a particular year.
For that reason the blessed Moses, inspired by the divine Spirit, teaches us with great precision, lest we fall victim to the same things as they, instead of being able to know clearly both the sequence of created things and how each thing was created. You see, if God in his care for our salvation had not directed the tongue of the biblical author in this way, it would have been sufficient to say that God made heaven and earth, the sea and living things, and not add the order of the days nor what was created first and what later.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Astronomy — The Hebrews were devout students of the wonders of the starry firmanent (Amos 5:8; Ps. 19). In the Book of Job, which is the oldest book of the Bible in all probability, the constellations are…
Firmament — From the Vulgate firmamentum, which is used as the translation of the Hebrew raki’a. This word means simply “expansion.” It denotes the space or expanse like an arch appearing immediately above us.…
Genesis — The five books of Moses were collectively called the Pentateuch, a word of Greek origin meaning “the five-fold book.” The Jews called them the Torah, i.e., “the law.” It is probable that the division…
Moon — Heb. yareah, from its paleness (Ezra 6:15), and lebanah, the “white” (Cant. 6:10; Isa. 24:23), was appointed by the Creator to be with the sun “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years”…
Sun — (Heb. shemesh), first mentioned along with the moon as the two great luminaries of heaven (Gen. 1:14-18). By their motions and influence they were intended to mark and divide times and seasons. The…
Year — Heb. shanah, meaning “repetition” or “revolution” (Gen. 1:14; 5:3). Among the ancient Egyptians the year consisted of twelve months of thirty days each, with five days added to make it a complete…
Creation · Order of: Fourth day, placing the sun, moon, and stars to give light, &c — Order of: Fourth day, placing the sun, moon, and stars to give light, &c
Firmament · The expanse above the earth — The expanse above the earth
Light · Sun, moon, and stars appointed to communicate to the earth — Sun, moon, and stars appointed to communicate to the earth
Months · Sun and moon designed to mark out — Sun and moon designed to mark out
Let there be lights [67] Moses passes onwards to the fourth day, on which the stars were made. God had before created the light, but he now institutes a new order in nature, that the sun should be the dispenser of diurnal light, and the moon and stars should shine by night. And He assigns them this office, to teach us that all creatures are subject to his will, and execute what he enjoins upon them. For Moses relates nothing else than that God ordained certain instruments to diffuse through the earth, by reciprocal changes, that light which had been previously created. The only difference is this, that the light was before dispersed, but now proceeds from lucid bodies; which in serving this…
The Fourth Day. - After the earth had been clothed with vegetation, and fitted to be the abode of living beings, there were created on the fourth day the sun, moon, and stars, heavenly bodies in which the elementary light was concentrated, in order that its influence upon the earthly globe might be sufficiently modified and regulated for living beings to exist and thrive beneath its rays, in the water, in the air, and upon the dry land. At the creative word of God the bodies of light came into existence in the firmament, as lamps. On יהי, the singular of the predicate before the plural of the subject, in Gen 1:14; Gen 5:23; Gen 9:29, etc., vid., Gesenius, Heb. Gr. 147. מאורת, bodies of light…
On days 4–6, God filled the domains that had been formed during days 1–3 (1:3-13).
1:14 Let them . . . mark the seasons, days, and years: The movement of the heavenly bodies defined Israel’s liturgical calendar, whose roots in creation gave a sacred timing to Israel’s festivals and celebrations (see Exod 23:15; Lev 23:4).
Rashi on Genesis 1:14
יהי מארת BE THERE LUMINARIES — They had been created on the first day, but on the fourth He commanded them to be suspended in the firmament (Chagigah 12a). Indeed, all the productions of heaven and earth were created on the first day, but each of them was put in its place on that day when it was so commanded. In reference to this it is written את השמים (v. 1) In the beginning God created that which was את with the heavens etc., in order to include all the productions of heaven, ואת הארץ to include all its (the earth’s) productions (Genesis Rabbah 12:4).
יהי מארת The word is written without the ו after the א (so that it may be read מארת, cursed), because it is a cursed day when children are…
Night · The heavenly bodies designed to separate day from — The heavenly bodies designed to separate day from
Seasons · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Stars, The · God: Appointed to give light by night — God: Appointed to give light by night
Sun · Created — Created
Sun, The · God: Created — God: Created
Time · Beginning of — Beginning of
Token · Sun and moon for time and sea — Sun and moon for time and sea
Year · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Years · The sun and moon appointed to mark out — The sun and moon appointed to mark out
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
