Re: [asa] Re: "day" and "yom"

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008, Jim Armstrong wrote:

> Re: "To the Hebrews a day was the time between one sunset and the next
> (not normally exactly 24 hours)"
>
> I'm not a Hebrew scholar, but I've certainly heard and read the opinions
> of some, and unless my memory has gone the way of the emu, even the
> Hebrew word itself in the time -- "yom" -- had virtually the same range
> of meanings as our English useage of "day", i.e., daylight, 24 hour
> period, a vague time (back in the day), a particular time period (...in
> the day of King...), a particular year identified by an event, for
> example (on the day of the Twin Towers disaster). [I'm not sure the
> examples are perfect!] The arguments go on and on based on the
> interpretation of the context and other considerations, and of course,
> everyone is quite certain of their interpretation. But the bottom line is
> that the word itself does not convey which of the meanings is intended.
> That is not surprising in a language with relatively small vocabulary
> (some 8,700 words, I read - compared with perhaps a half million in our
> own). My wife has been studying Biblical Hebrew for about 4 years now,
> and even with the context, the meanings can be insufficiently specific to
> narrow the translation to a single meaning. Besides, single meanings are
> not the Torah way - layers of meaning are, and the principal message
> seldom lies in the direct reading. [This according to a friend and
> teacher who is a product of the demanding Yeshiva in Jerusalem, as well
> as a scribe for several years.]
>
> JimA [Friend of ASA]
>

I agree, but I would add that the days of the Jewish calendar symbolize
the days of creation in Genesis. This does not mean that they are exact
replicas any more than other earthly entities such as the tabernacle are
exact replicas of the heavenly ones that they symbolize. Hebrews 8 refers
to a shadow of heavenly things, and I would suggest that our days are mere
shadows of the days of Genesis 1:1 to 2:3.

Gordon Brown (ASA member)

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Received on Thu Jun 12 00:27:06 2008