Genesis 8:22

Hebrew Bible

20 Noah built an altar to the Lord. He then took some of every kind of clean animal and clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 And the Lord smelled the soothing aroma and said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, even though the inclination of their minds is evil from childhood on. I will never again destroy everything that lives, as I have just done. 22While the earth continues to exist, planting time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.

Psalm 74:17

Hebrew Bible

15 You broke open the spring and the stream; you dried up perpetually flowing rivers. 16 You established the cycle of day and night; you put the moon and sun in place. 17 You set up all the boundaries of the earth; you created the cycle of summer and winter. 18 Remember how the enemy hurls insults, O Lord, and how a foolish nation blasphemes your name. 19 Do not hand the life of your dove over to a wild animal. Do not continue to disregard the lives of your oppressed people.

 Notes and References

"... Genesis 1 reflects the official biblical version of the order of creation; the account of the creation of the first day already mentions how God separated the light and darkness: “and God separated the light from the darkness” (Gen 1:4) The identification of light with the day and of darkness with the night is then repeated in the same order: “God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night” (verse 5). It follows from this that, in explaining the concept of the diurnal unit, it is composed of day and night, the next morning constituting the beginning of a new day. Parallel passages to this include Psalm 74:16: “Thine is the day, thine also the night,” which states that God is the master of times, and from which we likewise infer the order of the sections of the day. A similar approach appears at the end of the chapter on the Flood, where God promised to sustain eternally the arrangements of nature: ”While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22). It is reasonable to assume that the order of these pairs is not accidental, but reflects the original biblical understanding of the unit of the day ..."

Brin, Gershon The Concept of Time in the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls (pp. 155-156) Brill, 2001

 User Comments

Do you have questions or comments about these texts? Please submit them here.