There was evening and there was morning.

I have always been a little confused why the creation account in Genesis 1 after each day says there was evening and then there was morning. In fact I don't think I have even heard someone touch upon this in a sermon. 

I think my first reason for the confusion was trying to read it chronologically because if you do that morning comes before evening, at least does for me. 

I think my second reason for the confusion is not reading the account in light of the big story or the "main point" its trying to make. In other words I was trying to read it that proved this is exactly how God created the world instead of reading it in such a way that allowed me to see who God is.

I would like to spend a couple of posts unpacking a little bit of the creation story in Genesis 1 to see if some of the confusion can be cleared up.

In this post to start off with let me just give some background that will help us in the days to come. 

Hebrew writings tend to be very poetic, but not poetic in the way we think of poetry. In Hebrew most of everything was learned and passed down verbally before it was written, so it tends to have a sense of rhythm and flow to its language so that they would remember it a little easier. Its easier to remember the song on the radio you have heard 5 times than the biology test you took your freshman year in college, even if that was only last semester. About 75% of the old testament is written in some type of Hebrew poetry, which is sometimes the reason why we don't understand the OT, because Hebrew poetry is different than ours.

The Hebrews tend to use a form of poetry called parallel poetry quite often. The rabbis believed anything worth saying, is worth saying beautifully, and so they use parallel poetry and other forms to say beautiful things about God.

Parallel poetry is very simple but can often be over looked or misunderstood if you aren't keeping an eye out for it. Parallel poetry is prevalent in the psalms and proverbs, and it basically is saying the same thing in 2 or more different ways. Let me give you a couple of examples:

Psalm 119:105- "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path." The first part of this verse is paralleled with the second part. This is not saying 2 different things, but one thing in 2 different ways. 

Psalm 40:8- "I desire to do your will, O my God; your Torah is within my heart." Here we see the psalmist longing to do God's will, which is paralleled with having Torah within his heart. Meaning that longing to do God's will and learning Torah are the same thing. 

All of that is the background for Genesis 1, because Genesis 1 has parallel poetry running through it. When we go through Genesis 1 we will be looking for the parallel poetry to help us discover why evening is before morning.