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VI. CONCLUSIONS

This paper investigated the meaning of creation “days.” It has considered key arguments in favor of a figurative, non-literal meaning of the creation “days.” It found them to be wanting on the basis of genre investigation, literary considerations, grammatical study, syntactical usages, and semantic connections. The cumulative evidence, based on comparative, literary, linguistic and other considerations, converges on every level, leading to the singular conclusion that the designation yôm, “day,” in Genesis 1 means consistently a literal 24-hour day.

The author of Genesis 1 could not have produced more comprehensive and all-inclusive ways to express the idea of a literal “day” than the ones that were chosen. There is a complete lack of indicators from prepositions, qualifying expressions, construct phrases, semantic-syntactical connections, and so on, on the basis of which the designation “day” in the creation week could be taken to be anything different than a regular 24-hour day. The combinations of the factors of articular usage, singular gender, semantic-syntactical constructions, time boundaries, and so on, corroborated by the divine promulgations in such Pentateuchal passages as Exodus 20:8-11 and Exodus 31:12-17, suggest uniquely and consistently that the creation “day” is meant to be literal, sequential, and chronological in nature.

What does "the evening and the morning was the first day" mean? To emphasize it was 24 hours, He repeated it 5 more times. God made a point to show it was 24 hours to clear up situations just like this.

Pi is 3 if you round it to the nearest number. How many years passed before fractions were accepted? Fractions were generally accepted in about 1800 BC. Fractions weren't used for about 2000 years after Creation. Is abortion "figuratively" murder in Scripture? Is sodomy sexual sin that is spoken of in Rev 21:8? Using the word "figurative" just means you don't believe God tells the Truth. One of the problems Christianity has today is so called Christians make it up as they go along. Almost any day on FR I can read about "Christians" that now marry sodomites in their churches. Some get mad, some accept it, but God made it perfectly clear what He wants. Is it "figurative" to accept God said marriage is between one man and one woman? Does that rule out other combinations? Arguing with Him is just seen as unbelief.

Um, there is a perspective which supports the 24 hour days. We see the issue from our perspective in an expanding Universe. Perhaps from God’s perspective ar the origin looking toward our day, there have been almost six days of the doubling of the expansion. We are riding the expansion ‘outward’ from the moment The Word spoke into existence the dimensions into which the created mass is distributing. We see our trip as having taken 13 billions years, but from the origin moment perhaps only nearly six 24 hour expansion doublings have occurred. God had Moses write what only God could have seen happening so it is from His perspective. Gerald Schroeder has a couple of excellent videos on the subject,and he is an astrophysicist and devout Jew.