The Dawn of Time
The opening verses of Genesis also provides the dawn of time, as we know it.
On Day One, God separated light from darkness. (v. 4) God then called the light "day" and darkness "night". This resulted in "evening" and "morning", the first day. God declaring that light is "day" and darkness is "night" creates a time interval of a day, the first day. God even declares that this is a “day”, the first day, which is a unit of time. Prior to this part of the text, there is no mention of any time intervals.
God declares time and it happens. This happens before our celestial clocks even exist.
Days One, Two, and Three each happen before the creation of the sun, moon, and stars. These celestial bodies are necessary to mark the passage of time.
Without our sun, how would we know when a day ends and another begins? We can look to our clocks, but the ancients could not do this. Rather, the sun was the clock.
The author does not explain a resolution to this mystery of time before time-pieces, aside from stating that Days One, Two, and Three happened.
So when we get to verse fourteen and the celestial time markers, they are for us, not God. God does not need them to understand the passage of time. Verse fourteen says the sun, moon, and stars are there to serve as signs to mark seasons, days, and years.
Still though, an enigma remains and it makes one wonder - prior to the creation of the sun, what did a day look?
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