Digging Deeper on Genesis 1:5 and the Nature of the Days

Is there a conflict in Genesis 1:5? 

Genesis 1:5 KJV — . And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

If God called the darkness night, and He called "the LIGHT" day, then how can the night be anything but the condition which precedes the day rather than a part of the day itself?

This of course must be juxtaposed against the last phrase " the evening and the morning were the first day". The first part says that the LIGHT is day and the darkness is something else. The last part says that the evening and the morning together were the day, implying that the darkness WAS a part of the day. So a literal reading of this translation of the text is contradictory.

So there are three options. 1) Accept that the text immediately contradicts itself 2) pick one phrase as what you believe and pretend the other does not say what it says or 3) go to the Hebrew and see if this isn't a translation issue and the Hebrew itself is consistent.

An obstacle with option 3 - the interlinear tool on BLUELETTER BIBLE is flawed. Particularly with the last phrase of the verse. Look at the interlinear of the last part of the verse on BLUELETTER. It translates "haya" as "and" twice, but if you click on the number for the word, h1961, you will see that isn't what that word means. It means some form of "was" or "were" or "there was". It just has the character for "and" in front so that it should not say "and evening and morning" but "and there was evening, and there was morning". The BLUELETTER is just taking the first character that modifies the "was" and ignores the "was"

They also end the verse with the claim that the last three words are "yom- ehad - yom" and incredibly translate the first "yom" as "the". The - first - day. So it has the wrong words and the wrong meaning for those words. This isn't the way this verse ends in other interlinears and "yom" does NOT men "the". So Blue Letter Bible's interlinear is flawed and it doesn't take much looking to see that it is flawed. You will see this is a consistent pattern. When there is a root word that is modified to have a "the" or "and" in front of it, they ignore the root word and just list the meaning of the implied modifier. 

In contrast, here is biblehub's interlinear of the verse. Here you can see that the proper translation of this phrase is "and there was evening, and there was morning- day one". Further by clicking on the small blue "parts of speech" notes beneath them, you will see that these verbs are "consecutive imperfect". So it is referring to a series of events one after the other. Evening, then morning. It isn't co-joining the two as it would if the evening and the morning were both part of the day, it is saying that two events happened consecutively. 

Once you see it, the apparent conflict between the LIGHT being the day as opposed to the dark being something else, and the last part of the verse implying both darkness and light are the day- is resolved. The morning is the start of the day. The evening is what precedes the day, it isn't a part of it.

"and there was evening, and there was morning- X day".

That is saying something different than "the evening and the morning were the X day". With the KJV translation, there is a conflict because it seems the night is part of the day. With the former translation there is no conflict with the rest of the verse because it could just as easily be saying that the morning was the dawn of the new day and the evening was what was before the day, and not part of the day itself.

Many translations of scripture now recognize that the phrasing of the last sentence of Genesis 1:5, repeated throughout the chapter, is more ambiguous regarding this issue. The ESV is the main bible used where I attend, and it says "there was evening, and there was morning, the first day". The Brenton translation of the Septuagint has it the same way. Other translations are even more tilted towards a phrasing which supports the interpretation that the night was separate from the day. Here are a few. 

New Living Translation

God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.” And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day.

Berean Study Bible

God called the light “day,” and the darkness He called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Holman Christian Standard Bible

God called the light “day,” and He called the darkness “night.” Evening came and then morning: the first day.

Contemporary English Version

and named the light "Day" and the darkness "Night." Evening came, then morning--that was the first day.

Literal Standard Version

and God calls the light “Day,” and the darkness He has called “Night”; and there is an evening, and there is a morning—[the] first day.

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