Signs

1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

Having created light back in verse 3, God is now getting around to creating lights.  I understand "lights" to be what I might call "light sources", such as light bulbs or fireflies.  In this context, I would guess neither, but rather stars.  "Light" is what I think of as coming from light sources; so having it around first is strange.  The obvious way for me to create light is to start a fire.  But apparently these are the first light sources; the other light was just there.

The phrase "the firmament of the heaven" is an odd, redundant construct.  The firmament is named Heaven; the heaven is the firmament.

But this tells us a little about the firmament, about heaven.  The lights are in it.  These lights, therefore, are below the waters above the heaven, but are above earth and sea.

This is a very interesting "divide" phrase.  The purpose of the lights being created in heaven is "to divide the day from the night."  But, this is very confusing.  Recall that God divided light from darkness in verse 4.  After that, he named the light Day and the darkness Night.  So, God divided day from night in verse 4.  Now in verse 14, he is planning lights to divide day from night again.

When we first got to verse 8, it read like heaven was being created for the second time.  We used that to reinterpret the earlier structure, and conclude it was not as sequential as it seemed.  In particular, we now interpret the first verse as introductory.

So, now that it seems like day is going to be separated from night for a second time, can we go back to verse 4 and find a non-sequential interpretation?  Unfortunately, no.  Verse 5 identifies the separation of day and night as the first day.  Verse 8 marks a second day, and verse 13 marks a third day.  I don't want to jump ahead too much, but we seem to be clearly on the fourth day at this point.  That all seems starkly sequential to me.

That leaves us with this question: Was day divided from night on the first day or the fourth?  The rather unsatisfying answer is that the text pretty clearly says: Both.

The idea of lights somehow dividing day from night is a bizarre one.  I can picture heaven as a big (horizontal) dam, dividing water from water.  But I don't really get how lights are supposed to divide day from night, divide light from darkness.  But that is the first purpose of the lights God is here creating in heaven.

And the lights have other purposes: they are for signs, seasons, days, years.  At first glance, it seems like one of these things is not like the others: the last three are all time periods, while "signs" are not.  An annoyance about the three time periods is that they are not in order; it should be days, seasons, years; or years, seasons, days.

But there is an interpretation of "signs" which makes it related to time periods, and particularly to seasons.  It can be considered a sign, or indication, of when to plant various crops.  This is a bit of a stretch; crops aren't explicitly mentioned, but let me elaborate on this a bit.

Like the "seed after his kind" earlier, this would be considered important technology to an early farmer.  Understanding how to recognize the seasons in the stars to clearly identify from year to year the best time to plant would be useful.

We can use the stars for navigation: to determine where we are on earth; to determine which direction is which.  But this is not the purpose stated here.  The authors did not care about navigating; or did not know about navigating.  They were not navigators.

We can use the stars to understand physics, gravity, special and general relativity.  But this is not the purpose stated here.  The authors were not physicists.

If the lights being created in heaven include the sun (suggested by the "for days" purpose), we can use that as an energy source, to power cars, to burn ants; as a light source to read by, to paint by, and so on.  But the authors did not care about these uses.  They cared about marking times of the year, about when to plant, and when to harvest.

I like the fact that this verse ends in a colon.  The traditional division into verses is completely insane.  So why is my blog verse-oriented?  I have no response to that.