Creation (part five)

What did God create in the First Day? I believe this is describing that the sun began to shine, making day and night on earth. However, as we peek ahead to the Fourth Day, we see that the sun, moon and stars are first mentioned then. So…what???

Initially, I read this as that God had some other source of light for the earth between the first and fourth days. But now I am convinced the sun and earth were formed at about the same time, as per science, and that the light from the sun was opaque for many millennia. (I mention also that the imperfect tense is used here: “there began to be light”.)

For the first of six times, God looks at what he is making and sees that it is good. The seventh time, he looks at all of creation as sees that it is very good. This is important from a spiritual standpoint that evil had not yet come into the world, despite making mankind in the sixth age.

Genesis 1:14-18 reads “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate day from night…and let them be lights…to give light to the earth.’ And it was so. God made the two great lights…. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.”

The “vault of the sky” is also called the “firmament” and we’ll look at that more closely in a coming post. For now, suffice it to say for now that this is the edge of the earth’s atmosphere.

But cutting out the excess verbiage (as concerns the question at hand), it could read, “God made the (sun, moon and stars) give light on the earth.” I am also choosing a different meaning for “made” here than in other places in this text. Here it needs to read “caused (to give light)” instead of “formed”. I am not sure what to make of it, but in neither the first nor fourth day does God form or create the Sun. He says, “Let there be light” and there begins to be light.