Exegesis from scripture (literally, the bringing forth of meaning) by human intellect is necessarily confounded by the exegete’s (one who performs an exegesis) unconsidered biases. God’s self revelation during the Creation of the world, and God’s presence in the material and temporal world that we inhabit, is the actual “thing in itself”. It is only diminished by incomplete human attempts at exegesis, more or less colored by our sinful corruption.
The 6 day Creation sequence in Genesis is presented as a pair of 3 day sequences, with some analogy between days 1&4, 2&5, 3&6.
On day 1, God creates the light, and recognizes his image in the light which makes it good, and then names the light, “day”. We have from Scripture (1 John 1:5) that God is light. He then makes a clear division between His will as expressed in the light, and other occurrence that is not in accordance with His will (darkness) and names that “night”. This separation of light and dark is fundamental to God’s construction of reality. The things that God has created are good in themselves, there is no fundamental balancing force of evil in God’s created world. Evil appears as a privation or corruption of the good that God has created; it is not a separate viable entity unto itself. | On day 4, God installs temporal sources of light in the firmament of the heavens. These function to guide man’s awareness of time, and as a temporal division of the light from the darkness, which God also sees as good and in accordance with His will. Note that even the dark period is ruled by lesser lights (the moon and the stars) that God provides. Note also the progress of a day begins in darkness (and the evening and the morning were the 2nd day) and ends in light, following the sequence in which God created light to illuminate the already present darkness. This is consistent with the Hebrew calendar, which begins each day at dusk |
On day 2, God creates the firmament of heaven to divide the waters on the surface of the earth from the waters above the surface of the earth (rainclouds). | On day 5, the waters are commanded to bring forth all moving, living creatures (including birds), but whales are cited specifically as being created by God. These are all acknowledged as “good”, and so are blessed by God as temporal representatives of His will, and told to multiply and fill the earth with this goodness. |
On day 3, God constructs the terrestrial order that supports all of life on earth, by separating the dry land from the waters. The plants are brought into existence, as the root support of the entire tree of life, and both primitive and mature plant forms are placed on the earth, complete with seeds to begin the self-generative process after God creates them. Importantly, the plants are created under God’s divine light, but He will provide them a source of temporal light that governs their seasonal ebb and flow, on day 4 (see above). God’s providential, creative act therefore precedes the natural order of dependence, and is an indication that nature was created as a collection of perfectly abundant forms, which can later be rescued by salvation from their temporal dependencies. | On day 6, we will see God create the form that all of created nature silently anticipates in its yearning for salvation. |