Our God is Sovereign Over Time

OUR GOD IS SOVEREIGN OVER TIME

Further Reflection on Genesis 1:1-2:3

By Pastor Brian Wilbur

Date: February 6, 2022

Series: The Book of Genesis

Note: Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard   Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

In last week’s exposition of Genesis 1:1-2:3, we looked at the big picture: the living God, who is eternal and personal and sovereign and all-powerful and all-wise and extravagant, created and formed and filled the heavens and the earth and the sea – and all that is found therein – in six days. Then, on the seventh day, God stood back, ceased His work of creating the world, and enjoyed what He had made. The fitting response of us creatures to our Creator is to worship Him, to walk in humility before Him, and to trust Him. We should say,

“I lift up my eyes to the hills.

From where does my help come?

My help comes from the LORD,

who made heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121:1-2)

The One who made heaven and earth is incomparable in wisdom and power, and He promises to leverage His wisdom and power for the good of those who trust Him. God, who owns “the cattle on a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10), says, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.” (Psalm 50:12) Then He gives this great invitation: “[Call] upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” (Psalm 50:15)

This big picture of Genesis 1:1-2:3 is clear enough. But as I indicated last week, there are other very important matters in this passage that we must not leave unexplored – and the subject that I want to take up today is ‘time’.

WHAT IS TIME?

Time is something that we are all familiar with, as we are surrounded by clocks and calendars, dates and schedules – often in digital form. Even so, time can be somewhat challenging to wrap our minds around.

What is time? Our friend Merriam-Webster reports that there are several legitimate definitions of time. Let me share two. First, time is “the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues”. Second, time is “a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future”.[1]

Think about this: time is nonspatial. When God made heaven and earth, He made wide open physical space (seas and sky and land) full of objective matter (including fish in the seas, birds in the sky, and animals on the land). When God made these things, He didn’t make them as a ‘still frame’ image. God didn’t create the world ‘frozen in time’. The world isn’t static and unchanging. Instead, the world’s inhabitants are capable of motion, of development, and of change in relationship to other inhabitants. These interrelated and successive actions, processes, and events constitute the unfolding of time. Time is the “nonspatial continuum” in which creatures act, experience, move, and grow. And this general conception of time includes specific periods of measurable duration.

Now Genesis 1 makes clear that God is the Creator of time. God exists eternally apart from time and before time. God is a timeless being: He transcends time and is not bound by time, although He is able to create time and then He can speak and act within time if He so chooses. When God created the heavens and the earth, He created time. And lest you think I’m being abstract or philosophical, the notion of time jumps right off the pages of Genesis 1:1-2:3. Shall we seek to understand the time markers called ‘day’ and ‘week’ and ‘year’? Then pay close attention to the very beginning of the Bible.

In order to unpack this topic called time, I would like to do three things. First, I want to call your attention to the time references and time markers that are given in Genesis 1:1-2:3. We ought to understand what is there in the text. Second, I want to draw out a key discipleship lesson from this instruction. And third, I want to call your attention to some important development that occurs elsewhere in Scripture.

THE DAY

Let’s begin with the duration of time that is called ‘day’. As we do this, I’ll also address a common question: ‘How long were the days of Genesis 1?’

Genesis 1:1-5 says,

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” (Genesis 1:1-5)

The Hebrew word that is translated ‘day’ has a range of possible meanings, and determining the specific meaning that is intended in a particular expression depends on the context. The first time the word ‘Day’ occurs is at the beginning of verse 5: “God called the light Day”. In this instance ‘Day’ means daytime, which is defined in contrast to the nighttime: “and the darkness he called Night.” The second time the word ‘day’ occurs is at the end of verse 5: “And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” A similar expression occurs in verses 8, 13, 19, 23, and 31. In these places, the word ‘day’ is being used to describe the duration of time that includes both daytime and nighttime.

So here is the question: what constitutes a day according to verse 5? The answer: one complete cycle of darkness and light. This can be expressed alternatively as one complete cycle of Daytime and Nighttime or, as Genesis 1 prefers, as one complete cycle of evening and morning. Now hold that thought, and skip down to verse 14.

Prior to verse 14, God caused the light to shine without utilizing the sun, the moon, and the stars. Light and darkness, Day and Night, evening and morning came before the mediating ministry of the sun, moon, and stars. But on the fourth day, God made these heavenly luminaries in order to mark the passage of time. Genesis 1:14-19 says,

“And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so.  And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. (Genesis 1:14-19)     

Once again we see the concepts of daytime and nighttime. The greater light (which is the sun) will rule the daytime; the lesser light (which is the moon) will rule over the nighttime. Furthermore, the purpose of these heavenly lights is not only to rule daytime and nighttime and not only “to give light on the earth”, but also to function as time markers: “And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.” Henceforth the passage of one day upon the earth is connected to the light of the sun and the light of the moon.

What is one day? We have already learned that one day is one complete cycle of light and darkness, one complete cycle of daytime and nighttime, one complete cycle of evening and morning. Now we can add, in view of verse 14, that one day is one complete cycle under the greater light (which is daytime) and under the lesser light (which is nighttime). The subsequent scientific insight about the earth’s rotation on its own axis corresponds to what we see in Genesis 1. The sun stands still at 93 million miles away, and the complete cycle of light and darkness upon the earth happens because the earth is rotating on its axis, thereby exposing the entire planet to a cycle of facing the sun and not facing the sun in a 24-hour period, with the moon reflecting a slice of sunlight upon the earth at nighttime.

I trust that this brief study provides an easy answer to the question: How long are the days of Genesis 1? Genesis 1 could not be clearer: each of the six days constituted one cycle of light and darkness, one cycle of daytime and nighttime, one cycle of evening and morning, and – once you get into and past day four – one cycle of passing through the daytime sun and the nighttime moon. What this means is that each of the six days was a complete 24-hour rotation of the earth on its axis. This understanding is reinforced by the subsequent Scriptural teaching that the seven-day week of the Israelites was to be deliberately patterned after God’s seven-day week in creation:

“Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God…. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Exodus 20:9-10, 11)  

We’ll say more about the week in a little while. But before we do that, let’s turn our attention to other measurements of time.

SIGNS, SEASONS, MONTHS, AND YEARS

Although Genesis 1 doesn’t go into detail about how the heavenly lights will function as markers for signs and seasons and years, the root of this reality is right there in the text (in verse 14). And what do we find in the record of history? The overwhelming testimony of human history is that we mark so much of the passage of time, of seasons, of festivals, of months, and of years in relationship to the sun and the moon. Human society throughout the course of history is full of solar calendars (calendars based on the earth’s movement around the sun), lunar calendars (calendars based on the moon’s movement around the earth), and lunisolar calendars (which bring together both elements). The Gregorian calendar which we utilize is a solar calendar.

As we already saw in Genesis 1:14, the heavenly lights are designed to mark not only the passage of “days” but also the passage of “years”. Once again the passage of a year involves the interplay between the earth and the sun. What is a year? A solar year is the amount of time it takes for the earth to complete one revolution around the sun – this amount of time is just a bit shy of 365.25 days. A lunar year is twelve 29 ½ day cycles of the moon, which gives you around 354 days. One cycle of the moon (about 29 ½ days) constitutes one lunar month.

So, the passage of time on earth is directly related to the relative positions of the sun and/or the moon in relation to the earth.

Of course, Genesis 1:14 also says that the heavenly lights are “for signs and for seasons [or appointed times, as the ESV footnote says]”. This seems somewhat open-ended – not spelling it all out, but setting a foundation. One commentator suggests that the signs includes navigational signs for those sailing the high seas.[2] One also thinks of the alternating seasons of the year: the equinoxes and the solstices, summer and winter, seedtime and harvest.

One way or another, the reality of Genesis 1:14 gets expressed in myriad ways around the world.

Icelanders celebrate the Summer Solstice and stay awake to watch the Midnight Sun.

Asians celebrate the Lunar New Year with festivities and rituals.

In Western Christianity, how is the date of Easter determined? Go to the spring equinox (March 21), find the full Moon that occurs on or after that date, then the next Sunday is Easter Sunday.

In the Old Testament, God instructed His people Israel to offer sacrifices at appointed times. Numbers 28-29 gives instruction about the daily offerings, then the weekly Sabbath offerings, then the monthly offerings, and then the annual offerings. Note well: the day, the week, the month, and the year! The monthly offerings were to take place at the beginning of the new moon, and thus at the beginning of the new month.

Of course, Israel often abandoned the spirit of true worship, which is why the Lord said in Isaiah 1, “Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations – I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates” (Isaiah 1:13-14). But the problem wasn’t worshiping the Lord in connection with the new moon. The problem, rather, was that the worshipers were spiritually disconnected from the Lord.

In any case, my primary point here is simply to highlight the fact that marking days, months, and years in relation to the heavenly luminaries, and seeing them as signposts of seasons and as indicators of compass points, is all in accordance with God’s design. The problem, of course, is that those who turn away from the Lord will inevitably abuse the design. And God is not amused when human beings turn physical objects – even impressive physical objects like the sun – into objects of spiritual devotion. Deuteronomy 17:2-5 is clear,

“If there is found among you, within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, a man or woman who does what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, in transgressing his covenant, and has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have forbidden, and it is told you and you hear of it, then you shall inquire diligently, and if it is true and certain that such an abomination has been done in Israel, then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing, and you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones.” (Deuteronomy 17:2-5)

Therefore, learn the proper and limited use of the heavenly luminaries from Genesis 1:14-19. If you transgress those boundaries and wade into astrology and horoscopes, you are exposing your soul to grave danger. Be sure of this: there are not lucky stars for you to thank, and the secret to life is not found in the alignment of the stars.

THE WEEK

So far we have considered days and years, months and seasons. But we have not yet considered the week. And yet, it is fascinating to do so. The day, the month, and the year, along with various seasons, are marked by the position of the earth in relation to the sun or the position of the moon in relation to the earth. By God’s design, the passage of time on earth happens under the administration of the sun and the moon. And yet, the week stands out as altogether different. The seven-day week is not based on astronomical considerations. Instead, the seven-day week is based on God’s freely chosen, utterly unique, and clearly communicated workweek when He created the world: He worked six days, and then He rested on the seventh day.

As God’s image-bearers, we are to pattern our week after the way that God established His creation week: we work six days, and then we rest on the seventh day. The seventh day is the capstone of the week: “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy” (Genesis 2:3). The seventh day, later called the Sabbath Day, is the day when you get to enjoy the fruit of the labor of the first six days. At a deeper level, the seventh day is the day when you enter into God’s rest, when you slow down and enter into the blessedness and holiness that God has assigned to this special day.

Many believers hold the conviction that the seventh day Sabbath Day was transposed into the first day Lord’s Day, because our Lord rose from the dead and inaugurated the new creation on the first day of the week.

But either way, we live within the reality of a seven-day week, for the simple reason that God built it into the structure of our world.

Thus we live in a world that has a daily rhythm, a weekly rhythm, a monthly rhythm, and an annual rhythm. Welcome to the nonspatial continuum and measurable durations of Genesis 1!

YOU ARE ALWAYS ON GOD’S TIME

Now here’s the important question: so what? What difference should this make to our lives as disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ? Let me give you the short answer: you are always on God’s time!

This expression might sound a little familiar to you, for we will sometimes speak about employees being on company time – that is, they are on the clock with the expectation that they fulfill their tasks and receive corresponding wages. One of the lessons of Genesis 1 is that God has established the world in such a way that you, a mere creature, always live and move and have your being within the framework of time that God has set up. And the Scriptural testimony is clear that you must look beyond the framework of time to the God of glory who set the framework up. So the discipleship lesson is: you are always on God’s time! Now let’s unpack it.

I find it interesting that when God assigned dominion to mankind, He did not put the sun, moon, and stars under our charge. Genesis 1:26 says, beginning with the second sentence, “And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26) God appointed us as His stewards to oversee and administrate the sea creatures and the sky creatures and the land creatures and the earth as a whole. But the “lights in the expanse of the heavens” (Genesis 1:14) are not under our administration. Think about the significance of this!

Since earthly life is dependent on the light and heat of the sun, and since the sun is not under our dominion, we can immediately see how dependent we are on something that is not under our control. The very way that God fashioned the heavens and the earth testify to the fact that we are dependent creatures.

And since the heavenly lights are not under our dominion, and since the heavenly lights are there to rule over daytime and nighttime and to mark the passing of days and years, the logic is inescapable: time is not under our dominion. Time is not under our control. No thanks to us, the sun keeps shining. No thanks to us, the earth keeps spinning. No thanks to us, the earth keeps revolving around the sun. No thanks to us, the moon keeps orbiting the earth. No thanks to us, the mornings and the evenings keep a-coming. We frail creatures of dust must know and understand that the administration of time is fixed in the heavens!

But the point of all this is not to stand in glad adoration at the blazing sun or brilliant moon. Instead, you are supposed to look up and see God’s glory, majesty, and power reflected in the heavenly lights. How great is our God, if the earth is His footstool, and if heaven is His throne, and if the clouds are like dust from His feet? Human beings cannot get near the sun, and yet God holds the sun in His hand: He created it, He put it in its place, and He assigned it its purpose, and when its purpose is complete, the saints in glory “will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light” (Revelation 22:5).

But in the meantime, the heavenly markers of time are signposts of God’s glory: “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens…. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:1, 3-4). One implication of all this is that God’s glory stands over time. You are supposed to look up and be humbled before a personal and transcendent God, and then you are supposed to steward the time given to you in a way that honors Him.

In a similar way, the seven-day week stands forth as a testimony that this is God’s world, not ours; He made the world in accordance with His timetable, not ours; and He established the seven-day week as a pattern for our week, with an open invitation to share in the happiness and holiness of the seventh day.

God’s claim upon time, just like His claim upon the world, is absolute. Time is from Him, through Him, and for Him. It is fitting, therefore – in the Numbers 28-29 passage that I mentioned earlier – that God specifically gave Israel the daily offering, the weekly offering, the monthly offering, and the annual offerings. God puts the stamp of His sovereign authority on all time. And God makes it clear that our priority at all times must be covenant relationship with Him. Thus the lesson: you are always on God’s time. There is no time when you are free to ignore the instruction of Colossians 3:17, which says, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Colossians 3:17)

UNFOLDING THE SCRIPTURES

The final thing I’d like to do in this sermon is to take the foundational teaching in Genesis 1 that God is the sovereign Creator of time, and the key discipleship takeaway that you are always on God’s time, and show you some snapshots of how these things get developed elsewhere in Scripture. What follows is a sampling that might give you some lines of thought to pursue at the family dinner table! So, let’s get started.

God’s Faithfulness

The world that God created in the first six days has continued to be upheld by Him ever since. God upholds the earth and its cyclical positions in relation to the sun and moon with such constancy that it functions as an illustration of His covenant faithfulness. After promising the new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-34, the Lord speaks these words in verses 35-37:

“Thus says the Lord,
who gives the sun for light by day
    and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night,
who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—
    the Lord of hosts is his name:
 “If this fixed order departs
    from before me, declares the Lord,
then shall the offspring of Israel cease
    from being a nation before me forever.”

Thus says the Lord:
“If the heavens above can be measured,
    and the foundations of the earth below can be explored,
then I will cast off all the offspring of Israel
    for all that they have done,
declares the Lord.”” (Jeremiah 31:35-37)

The reliability and immeasurability of the heavens is a window into the reliability and immeasurability of God’s steadfast love for His people.

God’s Care for All People

Although God has a special love for His covenant people, He demonstrates genuine care for all people. One way that He demonstrates care for all people is His provision of sunlight and rainfall, even for evil and unjust human beings. Jesus told His followers, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” (Matthew 5:44-45).

The Natural World is an Open System

That final verse I just read reminds us of the important biblical truth that the natural world is not a closed system. If the natural world were a closed system, then everything that happened inside of the system could be explained by something else inside of the system. And some people live in that delusion: they think that the natural world is all that there is or ever was, and that it accounts for everything that has happened or will happen. The Bible’s teaching is very different. The Bible teaches us that the natural world is a reliable system, but it is not a closed system. What did Jesus say? “[Your Father who is in heaven] makes his sun rise… and sends rain.” Your heavenly Father is outside the system, but He causes things to happen inside the system. Do you see?

Your Heavenly Father Loves You

Now this should cause you to take heart. As wonderful as the sun is, as delightful as the moon is, as impressive as the stars are, they are unfeeling toward you. They don’t care about you one way or the other. They aren’t looking out for you. They are inanimate objects with a job to do, and they do it. But these heavenly luminaries are in the hands of a Father who loves you, and they do His bidding every day.

And the sovereign God who placed the lights in the sky to mark the passage of time on earth – He knows every detail about the passage of your time on earth. As David prayed to God,

“My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139:15-16)

The Lord directs the steps of those who trust Him, and He engages His resources for their good. Psalm 121 declares:

“The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you my day, nor the moon by night. The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.” (Psalm 121:5-8)

No one should fear that time might be against you, if God your heavenly Father is for you! Remember this: neither “things present nor things to come… nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38, 39) You should not say, ‘Time is not on our side’, if you know that your heavenly Father is on your side!

God is Sovereign Over All Things

We can have this confidence because all things are God’s servants (Psalm 119:91), and God’s will is that “for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) All things do God’s bidding. If God wants to cause the earth (in relation to the sun) and the moon to halt their ordinary movements in order to allow an extended period of daylight upon the earth on a particular day in history for the benefit of His embattled people, that is not difficult for God to do (see Joshua 10:1-14). If God wants to interrupt the ordinary shining of sunlight upon a particular place, and instead impose pitch darkness upon that place for three days because He is bringing judgment upon the wicked people who live there, that is not difficult for God to do (see Exodus 10:22). If God wants to appoint a unique star to shine over the little town of Bethlehem, so that wise men from the east would see a sign that the King of the Jews had been born and then follow that sign to come and worship Him, that is not difficult for God to do (see Matthew 2:1-12).

The Glory of God’s Son

And so it is that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” (Galatians 4:4-5) God’s Son is greater than the physical sun, for He is the true light: “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.” (John 1:9) “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5) Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”” (John 8:12)

As the faithful Son, Jesus knew that He was always on His Father’s time. And He lived accordingly. Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me. And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.” (John 8:28-29) Jesus always lived on His Father’s time, and He knew that His life was directed toward one crucial hour when He would bear the sins of the world. And as that hour drew near, He prayed, “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” (John 12:27-28)

And when Jesus was lifted up on the cross as the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world, do you remember what happened? God, who holds the heavenly luminaries in His hand and orchestrates all that comes to pass, did something: “Now from the sixth hour [that is, Noon] there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.” (Matthew 27:45) The light of the world was enveloped in darkness, because He bore in our place the Father’s dreadful judgment upon our sin. And when you come into the presence of the true light, the light of the sun and the light of the moon and the light of the stars fade into the background. What they offer is cold and lifeless in comparison to this holy sacrifice. In the words of Isaac Watts:

“Well might the sun in darkness hide, and shut its glories in, when God, the mighty maker died, for his own creature’s sin.”[3]

And in the words of Stuart Townend and Keith Getty:

“There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain:
Then bursting forth in glorious day
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me,
For I am His and He is mine –
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.”[4]

This Lord Jesus Christ has been appointed to be the proper ruler over all of your daytimes and over all of your nighttimes, over all of your rhythms of day and week and month and year, over all of your working and resting, for He is preeminent in all things. If by faith you live as a disciple who is always on His time, then at the end of your earthly pilgrimage He will bring you into the glory of His everlasting kingdom. Brothers and sisters, ascribe to Him all glory, honor and praise! In words from one final hymn:

“Crown Him the Lord of years,

The potentate of time,

Creator of the rolling spheres,

Ineffably sublime.

All hail, Redeemer, hail!

For thou hast died for me.

Thy praise shall never, never fail

Throughout eternity.”[5]

FOOTNOTES

[1] See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/time  

[2] Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Ariel’s Bible Commentary: The Book of Genesis. Fourth Edition. San Antonio: Ariel Ministries, 2020: p. 48.

[3] Isaac Watts, “Alas and Did My Savior Bleed”.

[4] Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, “In Christ Alone”. © 2001 Thankyou Music (Adm. by CapitolCMGPublishing.com excl. UK & Europe, adm. by Integrity Music, part of the David C Cook family, songs@integritymusic.com)

[5] From the hymn “Crown Him with Many Crowns”.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Ariel’s Bible Commentary: The Book of Genesis. Fourth Edition. San Antonio: Ariel Ministries, 2020. 

Russell T. Fuller, "Interpreting Genesis 1-11." The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, Vol. 5, No. 3. Louisville: The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fall 2001. 

Douglas F. Kelly, Creation and Change: Genesis 1:1-2:4 in the Light of Changing Scientific Paradigms. Revised & Updated Edition. Ross-shire: Mentor, 2017.

Vern S. Poythress, Interpreting Eden: A Guide to Faithfully Reading and Understanding Genesis 1-3. Wheaton: Crossway, 2019.

Allen P. Ross, Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Study and Exposition of Genesis. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1998.

Jonathan D. Sarfati, The Genesis Account: A theological, historical, and scientific commentary on Genesis 1-11. Powder Springs: Creation Book Publishers, 2015.

Andrew E. Steinmann, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, Volume I). Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019.