Light from the darkness

1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

God sees; again, this suggests a God with eyes; a physical, human-like God.

Ignoring modern metaphorical meanings, which I assume don't apply here, "saw the light" is a pretty odd phrase in some ways.  Technically, eyes are essentially photon detectors; everything seen is light.  But, usually, we talk of seeing something which is reflecting light (or occasionally, generating it).  That is "When I turned on the light, I could see the sofa, dusty under the gray dim bulb."  But here we have light, without any particular source ("and there was light"), and that's what God is looking at.

One last, minor point on the first phrase.  This again is suggesting a strong, solid sequentiality to these events.  Make the earth, describe the earth.  Make the light, see the light.

More interesting is what the next phrase seems to tell us about God.  God saw that the light was good.  This implies to me that before that, God didn't know that the light would be good.  That the light could have been flawed.  If God was the creator of the light, this means that God was half-expecting himself to screw up.

Alternately, this could again be interpreted as God hiring a contractor.  God said to the contractor, Let there be a kitchen.  And the contractor made a kitchen, and God saw the kitchen, and the kitchen was awful.  And God said, small-claims court.  And the kitchen got better.

Or, from the committee viewpoint, after the action subcommittee made the light, the quality assurance subcommittee signed off on the light being good.

Regardless of whether God was expecting himself to ruin the light, or some committee to ruin it, this is distinctly a God who is not all-powerful, all-knowing.  This is a God with limitations, with the potential for imperfection or failure.

On to the second clause.  I'm going to refrain from using the phrase "God divided" to try to argue that God was a mathematician.

Darkness was mentioned a couple verses back, and I wrote that I consider darkness to be an absence of light.  But this seems like a darkness which is more real, more of an equal of the light.  It also suggests that light can be somehow mixed with darkness, which seems just as odd.  I'm not clear on what that could even mean.

Further, we have a two step process: creating light, and then separating it from darkness.  (Checking that it's good may be a third step.)  Again, at best this is a God who can make light from nothing, but who can't make it already separated from the darkness.

So, in these 4 verses we have a portrait of God, speaking and seeing, powerful but insecure, impressive but imperfect.