How Long was Creation Day Three?

Many Christians believe that the Bible records 24-hour creation days. Yet the Old Testament does not mention hours (in the original languages). In Moses' era, linear time had not yet been invented. (They could not imagine linear time because it violated their earth-histories). For example, Moses recorded that the earliest people lived for close to a thousand years. Our facial bones are the only parts of our skeleton that continue to grow as we age. If we lived for geological ages, our brows would grow thick like an adult Neanderthal. Since the Neanderthal children's skulls and modern faces do not have the brow ridges, evidently the ancients often lived for geological ages, unlike us. A westerner might ask, what changed - that the ancients lived for eons? Ancient people might answer, "Why everything changes! Even matter changes and everything is made of matter." Unlike the ancients, western reasoning starts with an inflexible presumption that the properties of matter are fixed, not emerging. We should interpret the Bible in the language and culture of the author, not adjust it to fit the modern faith in immutable matter and its derivative - linear time. Let's examine Day Three to see if it fits the modern notion of linear 24-hour days.

Genesis 1:9 says Elohim (the plural God who is One) continued to command the mayim (waters) under the shamyim (atmospheric sky) to continually collect together (gavah) in one place (magom echad) so that the dry land continued to appear.

Verse 10 - Elohim continued to name the dry land erets (earth). He completed naming the mayim - yamin (plural seas). Elohim continued to see that this was good.

Verse 11 - Elohim continued to command the earth to causally and continually sprout grass, green plants and wooded trees that in unbroken continuity continued to yield seeds and fruit (whose seed was in itself) after its kind.

Verse 12 - The earth continued to sprout grass and green plants which continually yielded seeds after their kind and wooded trees yielding fruit. Elohim continued to see that it was good.

Verse 13. The evening and morning were Day Three.

Day three has two phases. Both phases end with "it was good." Elohim first continually commanded water to gather into one place and nature responded. He also continued to name the land - erets. The continual naming of the land suggests a gradual appearing of the ground.

If the Earth was covered in water, wasn't the water already in one place? Why did Elohim call the name of the water-in-one-place, yamin - plural seas? Today the water on earth is divided into three places. (1) More than 70% of the modern Earth's surface is water - the source for rain. (2) A small percentage of Earth's water is in the atmosphere - part of the rain cycle. (3) Vast aquifers of subterranean water exist under the land. When water is pumped out of these aquifers, the land settles and may collapse into sink holes. Geologists also discovered, from earthquakes, an oceanic volume of liquid water deep under China.

How did the primordial waters gather together underground? The primordial ocean was probably warm and acidic. Acidic water percolates down by dissolving crevices in the underlying rock. Indeed, we find long quartz seams that crystalized long ago in cavities made by highly reactive water. Why don't our present oceans soak into the earth and disappear? The modern oceans are slightly alkaline, not acid, and their floors are made of dark, fine-grained very dense basalt. The grains are so fine that one needs a microscope to see them. Continental rocks are older, lighter, have much coarser grains (from slow cooling) than the floors of the modern oceans. Continental basements are riddled with water disolved caves and seams of water depostied minerals. * This is a water depoited primordial quartz vein in solid rock.


Although the water gathered together into one place, the text refers to plural seas. The Semitic people called the subsurface waters - tehom. Genesis 49:25 defines tehom as what "lies beneath."
Consider the evidence for ancient subterranean seas (tehom).

(A) The continents only fit together on a minuscule 'terra firma' planet (without major surface seas).

(B) The modern oceanic floors formed much later than the continents.

(C) A global expansion seam continues to spread out new oceanic earth-crust from dense basalt.

(D) Scientific subduction theory is impossible since the "subduction zones" have undisturbed (relatively thin) layered sediments. Millions of cubic kilometers of sea-oozes cannot vanish into the molten earth without disturbing the layered sediments or back-venting steam and lava. Evidently the Earth spread out in unbroken continuity, from a terrene world without major surface oceans to one that is mostly seas. This scenario fits the Hebrew grammar from several biblical passages.
*** The land in this picture is green the water is darker. We see how both hemisphers grew.

2 Peter 3:5 states that "by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and earth (Greek for the terrene globe) was sinistao (actively, once for all brought together) out of (ek) water and in (dia) water." Peter accepted the events recorded on Day Three literally. He also mentions the antiquity of the heavens (ouranoi esan ekpalai). Ekpalai is a compound of ek (to come out) and palai / palin (to renew by repetitions, to turn). We can see the past exactly as it happened in the distant heavens. Countless galactic stars in billions of galaxies accelerated out, spiraled out, rotated out from dense, naked, long ago galactic cores. According to Genesis one, the Sun, Moon and stars were placed in the spreading out place (raqiya) on Day Four, approximately 6,000 years ago. The biblical age of the earth and the visible age of the galaxies are not contradictions. We can see with sight innumerable atomic light clocks and galactic orbits accelerating together as billions of galaxies grew from the insides outwards. This visible evidence contradicts the scientific idea that atoms are perpetual motion clocks. This visible evidence confirms the events the Bible records on Day Four. If Day Four was long ago, then surely Day Three was even longer ago. *** HUDF galaxy 3180

Genesis 2:5 - 6 states that it did not rain when Adam lived in the garden of Eden. The English text says a mist ascended to irrigate the "face of the ground." The Hebrew word translated mist (ed) is only used twice in the Old Testament. A related Akkadian word described the annual innundation of the rivers of Babylon. Apparently the surface was watered by up welling water from the deep.
(A) The Earth must have been mostly land if it did not have a rain cycle.
(B) According to Genesis 2:10-14 a river divided and flowed around various lands. Today's rivers run into the oceans; they do not encircle the land.
(C) During the flood, the fountains of the great deep (rab tehom) were passively rent (Genesis 7:11). (The Hebrew word for Noah's flood means: water flow). All of the events of the first phase of Day Three suggest geological ages that formed an Earth much different from our modern globe. Yet according to the text these things happened during a half a day.

Phase two of Day Three follows the gradual formation of the dry land. Elohim continually commanded the land to sprout plants that grew up out of the ground and produced seeds after their kind. He did not form the plants (as He did man). (1) He commanded the ground (nature) to continually form the plants. The ground sprouted wooded trees that produced fruit all on the same day. (2) The fact that God's commands are continuous shows that they were durative, continuing processes. (3) God was involved in every stage - in the gradual appearing of the land and in the gradual forming and growing of plants from the ground. ****

Someone might object that growing plants need light and according to Genesis the Sun was not formed until Day Four. Yet the text specifies that God completed the heavens and created light on Day One. Billions of ancient galaxies glow in the distant heavens. We see with our eyes that primordial galaxies emitted prodigious amounts of warm light even before the galactic stars began to form and spiral out. Since the common history of galaxies is visible in all directions, the same certainly occurred locally.

Someone might object that today's fruit trees are usually pollinated by insects that were not formed until day five or six. Coal seams laid down in antiquity reveal that most ancient trees were ferns that are not pollinated by insects. Today a vast number of different pollination relationships link plants and animals. Many of these pollination schemes are highly complex, yet they vary from one location to another. If God is doing this now, today, why would He not have done so even before the animals existed? God is continually active in creation (Job 38 - 41).

Why is it so difficult for Western people to accept the Genesis account in its grammatical and cultural context? Westerners learn to think and measure with science. Scientific methods and measuring were founded on a foundational principle, invented by a pagan Greek, that matter does not change with age. It is from this one assumption (that the properties of matter are fixed) that westerners developed their notion of time and defined ways of allegedly measuring it. Peter, a disciple of Jesus, predicted this idea and attributes it to the false teachers of the last days.

We should interpret creation in its historical, cultural and grammatical context. In Moses' day, both Jews and pagans believed that ancient time was long and had continued to deteriorate. We can see all the way back into the past. With our eyes we see that atomic clocks, the very thing we imagine are measuring linear time, accelerated throughout cosmic history. We also see that orbital clocks also concurrently accelerated as billions of galaxies grew, spreading out in unbroken continuity, just as expected from the literal words of the Bible. How utterly and completely the words of the Bible will vanquish science, just like the Bible predicts. (I Corinthians 1:19 - 21).

* The vein of quartz is from Wikipedia and is licensed for attribution sharing.
** The growing Earth image is copyrighted by Michael Netzer who allows its free redistributed. It shows both hemisphers as the Earth grew from a tiny terrain planet to a massive mostly-water body.