God called the light “day,” and the darkness He called “night.” And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
Parallel translations
- WEB God called the light “day”, and the darkness he called “night”. There was evening and there was morning, the first day.
- KJV And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
- BSB God called the light “day,” and the darkness He called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
- NKJV God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
- NLT God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.” And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God names day and night, and the first day ends. Naming shows God's authority over what he has made, and time itself is his gift.
Overview
By naming the light 'day' and the darkness 'night,' God exercises lordship over creation, since in the ancient world to name something was to have authority over it. The refrain 'there was evening and there was morning' marks the rhythm of ordered time that God establishes from the start. Faithful Christians differ over whether these 'days' are ordinary 24-hour periods or a literary framework, but all agree the passage teaches that God alone orders time and creation.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 14
- Ps 74:16The day is yours, the night is also yours. You have prepared the light and the sun.
- Isa 45:7I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create calamity. I am Yahweh, who does all these things.
- Ps 104:20You make darkness, and it is night, in which all the animals of the forest prowl.
- 1 Th 5:5You are all children of light, and children of the day. We don’t belong to the night, nor to darkness,
- Jer 33:20“Yahweh says: ‘If you can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, so that there shall not be day and night in their season;
- Gen 8:22While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.”
- Ps 19:2Day after day they pour out speech, and night after night they display knowledge.
- Gen 1:8God called the expanse “sky”. There was evening and there was morning, a second day.
- Eph 5:13But all things, when they are reproved, are revealed by the light, for everything that reveals is light.
- 1 Cor 3:13each man’s work will be revealed. For the Day will declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself will test what sort of work each man’s work is.
- Gen 1:31God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
- Gen 1:23There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
- Gen 1:19There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
- Gen 1:13There was evening and there was morning, a third day.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
Resources, by level
Lay
The single best free starting point for Genesis 1–11 — clear, visual, and faithful to the literary design.
Pastoral
The beloved devotional-pastoral classic, free and public domain — warm, quotable, verse by verse.
Commentaries & study tools
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Sermons and teaching on this passage from across YouTube.
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Matthew Henry, Barnes, Gill, the Pulpit Commentary, Ellicott, Cambridge, and more — stacked on one page for this exact verse.
The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).
Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
From the first promise that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent (3:15), through Abraham's blessing to all nations and Judah's coming ruler, Genesis sows every seed that flowers in Christ — the true offspring, the better Adam, the ram caught for Isaac.
How Genesis 1:5 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.