The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Young Earth vs. Old Earth Revisited

I was recently on another Reformed board reading a blog concerning Young Earth vs. Old Earth. Years ago, one of the arguments (and there are many) that convinced me of the Y/E position is when I read that whenever the Hebrew word “Yom” is used in the OT with a numeral it always means a 24 hour period of time.

Reading this blog I noticed that one of the bloggers challenged this argument saying and I quote: “Hosea 6:1,2 . . . Clearly the prophet is not speaking of solar “days” but of longer periods in the future. Yet he
numbers the days in series.”

As I went to this passage, I had a hard time understanding where this particular blogger was coming from by this refutation. In fact as I read the verse I thought it backed up my understanding. Yet, this went unchallenged by any of the YE bloggers, but was applauded by a few OE bloggers. Unfortunately, the blog was closed before I could say anything.

I was however left wondering if I could be missing something in my reading of Hosea 6:1-2 on why someone could conclude that it clearly is talking about long periods of time. I have checked some other blog entrees made by the same person who made the quote above and it appears that he is quite conservative in almost everything else he said. He has stated elsewhere that he has a high view of Scripture and believes that Scripture must interpret Scripture.

1 Come, and let us return to the LORD;
For He has torn, but He will heal us;
He has stricken, but He will bind us up.
2 After two days He will revive us;
On the third day He will raise us up,
That we may live in His sight. NKJV
What do you think?

Tom

1. Perhaps you misunderstood or failed to notice the specific qualification concerning "yom" with a numeral which could quickly disqualify the phrase in Hosea 6:1,2? The actual 'proof' is usually stated as:

"Argument from ordinal prefix. In the 119 cases in Moses’ writings where the Hebrew word “yom” stands in conjunction with a numerical adjective (first, second, third, etc.), it never means anything other than a literal day. The same is true of the 357 instances outside of the Pentateuch, where numerical adjectives occur."

In Hosea 6:2 we read, "after two days", not "after the second day".

2. Even, for the sake of argument, if the Hosea passage is understood to mean a longer period than 24 hours, which it certainly does, IMO... AND, it can be shown that this is an exception to the 'ordinal' argument, it still has little to no weight in refuting the overwhelming evidence that "yom" in Genesis 1 is to be understood as 24 hours.

For a brief but succinct defense of the traditional "6 day 24-hour" interpretation of the creation in Genesis 1, see here: The Length of Days in Genesis 1.

Pilgrim

Forgive me for not understanding you, but it appears you and I are both saying the same thing. Yet, I know you wouldn't have said what you did if I wasn't missing something.

I asked my wife to look at this and she is confused also.

Thanks for the article.

Tom

Tom,

I don't understand your confusion. Perhaps I have not grasped what is bothering you???

My impression was you wanted to know how to refute this person's response who appeared to find a loophole or exception to the "ordinal + yom" rule using the Hosea 6:2 passage. Is that correct?

IF <--- that is correct, then my answer is that Hosea 6:2 either 1) doesn't qualify grammatically because the text says, "in two days" rather than "the second day", more specifically, there is no use of a numeric adjective with "yom". And,

IF <--- one wants to accept that the Hosea 6:2 passage does qualify under the numeric rule, then this would be a single exception to the rule which does not and cannot nullify the hundreds of other examples where a "numerical adjective" is used with "yom".

In short, Hosea 6:2 is at best a VERY weak argument against the 24-hour 6-day creation interpretation of Genesis 1. The combined weight of all the arguments for this view is overwhelming and Hosea 6:2 is of no consequence regardless how one understands it.

Lastly, I do believe that "yom" as it appears in Hosea 6:2, preceded by the "two" is to be understood as a period of time rather than 48 hours.

Now, if I have totally failed to clear things up for you, please try to let me know what it is you are still confused about?

Pilgrim

Thank you, that was helpful. Perhaps it was just the way you worded it before that confused me.

I would however, like you to expand on the following, particularly on what in the context leads you to believe it is a period of time, rather than 48 hours.


Not saying I disagree, just wanting to understand a little better.

Tom

- The passage is prophetic in nature.
- Fulfillment was in the distant future.

To show that my understanding is wrong all one needs to do is show that Hosea's words actually happened two days after they were spoken. This is one of the major hermeneutical problems Chiliasts face with their "plain reading, literalist" reading of the Bible.