In Genesis 1:3–5, in the discussion of the first day’s light, it becomes clear that for the Israelites order, not objects, was the focus of creation. In Genesis 1:5a the NIV translates, “God called the light (ʾor) ‘day’ (yom) and the darkness he called ‘night.’” If God called the light yom, why do the authors continue throughout the Old Testament to call light ʾor? It is a question anyone could answer with a little thought: it was not the element of light itself (as physicists would discuss it) that God called yom, but the period of light. There is a term for the semantic phenomenon that is
...more
