Dawn!

New things come to light every day. Well, I shouldn’t say “new” because everything that we find has been here from a beginning so it can’t be new. However, I believe that something can seem “new” to us because we never knew of it before it “dawned” on us. Light reveals things.

We now live in a world where we don’t have to take someone’s explanation for something. We’ve been educated so we are able to read and were given tools so that we could do our own research. We no longer have to rely on a priesthood of elites who have to do the reading and explaining for us. However, it’s easier for the masses to continue to rely on the priesthood because, that way, they can continue to hold dear and close to themselves the lies and the falsehoods that have been passed down from one generation to the next. I want to take a moment to comment on education.

One of the cornerstones of ancient, and perhaps modern Israel, was education. Yahuah commanded Mosheh to command the people (Yahuah commanded Mosheh because the people had rejected Yahuah in favor of Mosheh) to constantly educate the youth.

Deu 11:19  And you shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up,  :20  and SHALL WRITE THEM ON THE DOORPOSTS OF YOUR HOUSE AND ON YOUR GATES,  :21  so that your days and the days of your children are increased on the soil of which יהוה (Yahuah) swore to your fathers to give them, as the days of the heavens on the earth.  :22  For if you diligently guard all these commands which I command you, to do it, to love יהוה (Yahuah) your Elohim, to walk in all His ways, and to cling to Him,  :23  then יהוה (Yahuah) shall drive out all these nations before you, and you shall dispossess greater and stronger nations than you.  :24  Every place on which the sole of your foot treads is yours: from the wilderness, and Lebanon, from the river, the River Euphrates, even to the Western Sea is your border.  :25  No man shall stand against you. יהוה (Yahuah) your Elohim shall put the dread of you and the fear of you upon all the land where you tread, as He has spoken to you.  :26  See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse:  :27  the blessing, when you obey the commands of יהוה (Yahuah) your Elohim which I command you today;  :28  and the curse, if you do not obey the commands of יהוה (Yahuah) your Elohim, but turn aside from the way which I command you today, to go after other mighty ones which you have not known. The Scriptures

You’ve got to teach your children to read, if you want them to read and comprehend for themselves, what’s written on the doorposts and gates. What good parent wouldn’t do that for their child if they wanted them to prosper as promised? Enough said on this subject for now.

I’ve encountered one organization and an individual, online, who made the same claim: the Sabbath only had to be observed during the daytime. Their argument intrigued me and I decided to investigate.

There wasn’t anything in the Tanakh or the bible where it said to observe the Sabbaths during the daytime only. After all the command was to:

Exo 20:8  “Remember the Sabbath day, to set it apart.  :9  “Six days you labour, and shall do all your work,  :10  but the seventh day is a Sabbath of יהוה (Yahuah) your Elohim.

Okay, the Sabbath day. Aren’t there twenty four hours in a day? So, it would seem that the only thing to know was when the day begins and when it ends? Our modern society says the day starts at midnight…twelve o-clock in the morning. The Jews claim the day starts at sundown…no particular time as sunrise and sunset happen at different times depending on the season. However, the way things were observed thousands of years ago are not the way they are observed today. We think we have the superior way of doing things. How do we determine the truth?

The clue can be found in the first book of the Tanakh and the bible.

Gen 1:4  And Elohim saw the light, that it was good. And Elohim separated the light from the darkness.  :5  And Elohim called the light ‘day’ and the darkness He called ‘night.’ And there came to be evening and there came to be morning, one day. The Scriptures

Maybe the King James Version has something to offer?

Gen 1:4  And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.  :5  And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. 

Do you see the clue in either of these verses? No? Yes? Maybe we should look at the original Hebrew?

Gen 1:3 ויאמר אלהים יהי אור ויהי־אור׃
Gen 1:4 וירא אלהים את־האור כי־טוב ויבדל אלהים בין האור ובין החשׁך׃
Gen 1:5 ויקרא אלהים לאור יום ולחשׁך קרא לילה ויהי־ערב ויהי־בקר יום אחד׃

FYI: Remember: Hebrew is read right to left. Also, a warning: you can look up the Hebrew words in Strong’s, but the Strong’s Concordance only deals with the Hebrew base words and it misses the tense and gender of the words which can dramatically change the meaning of a word or sentence. Also, there isn’t any punctuation in Hebrew so, all of the translations may be changing things with their arbitrary use of punctuation. Also, the creation of verses was an arbitrary matter though the verses were supposedly created to help us. What to do?

Let’s look at verse four. We can see that Elohim separated or divided the light from the darkness. No big deal right? Don’t we notice the same thing today…that the light and darkness are different? We have to read on though.

Verse five holds the second third of the clue: That Elohim called the light day and the darkness he called night. Still don’t get it? What about the rest of verse five?

The final part of the clue is the end of the verse where it’s purported to say: “And the evening and the morning were the first day.” Still don’t get it?

Let’s see if we can tie all of this together. First, Yahuah separates the light, which he sees as good, from the darkness. Yahuah doesn’t consider the darkness to be good like he does the light. Here, Yahuah makes a distinction between the two so that we don’t think of them together as a unit…like we do today. Yes, one follows the other and we will seemingly always have day and night. However, according to Yahuah, they are separate and are to be dealt with that way. Think of it this way: light and darkness are like good and evil, totally opposite. Now, let’s look at verse five.

It’s in verse five that we see that Yahuah calls the light “day” and the darkness he calls “night.” Nowhere in these verses does Yahuah ever tie the two together to call them “a day.” But wait, you might say, what about the rest of that verse?.

My answer: show me where he calls day and night combined to be “a day.” He doesn’t. The last part that the evening and morning were the first day isn’t the same as night and day were the first day. The words evening and night come from different words and mean different things. The words morning and day come from different words and mean different things.

The Hebrew word for night is “lielah” and means night. The only light at night comes from the moon and stars. If not for the moon, which cannot be seen on some days, and the tiny pinpricks of light from the stars, it would be totally dark.

The Hebrew word for evening is “ereb” and means dusk or sunset. There is still some light at this time and, in my estimation, should be considered a part of the day. It is not yet totally dark and there is enough light to see where you’re going or what you’re doing.

The Hebrew word “yome” means “day.”

The Hebrew word “boker” means “dawn,” or “morning.” It’s the period of time when the sun isn’t visible, but there’s enough light to see where you’re going or what you’re doing.

So, it would seem that the two combined, ereb and boker, make for a day. You might object then that the word ereb comes first then the word boker comes second. The evening comes before the dawn so that would have to include the night between them and encompass a day. Isn’t that what it says in these verses?

I could easily counter that in verse four Yahuah first mentions the day then the night. However, the fact that the evening and morning are mentioned together doesn’t mean that it includes the night that would come between or that the order they are mentioned means that that’s the order that we should think of them in. Remember however, that there is no punctuation in Hebrew so the additions of commas and periods and the like might be purely arbitrary.

Remember the warning about the gender and tenses being ignored by Strong’s? Not only did Strong not pay attention, but neither did the translators of The Scriptures or the King James Versions.

The Scriptures renders the end of the verse in question as, “ And there came to be evening and there came to be morning, one day.” The Kings James translators rendered it this way, “And the evening and the morning were the first day.” How should it be translated?

Let’s rearrange the punctuation. Let’s include the previous sentence and some of the last sentence together and include the proper gender for the verbs. We get this, “And Elohim proclaimed the light day and the darkness he proclaimed night and he (it) became an evening. Then this, “And he (it) became a morning one day.” Why this way? This is what it says in Hebrew with the exception of the punctuation which I provided.

Let’s put it this way: out of the 77 verses and 165 times when day and night are mentioned in the Tanakh, only 16 times is the night mentioned first. Here’s something to consider:

Gen 8:22  as long as the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”

Jer 33:20  “Thus said יהוה (Yahuah), ‘If you could break My covenant with the day and My covenant with the night, so that there be not day and night in their season,  :21  then My covenant could also be broken with Dawid My servant – so that he shall not have a son to reign upon his throne – and with the Lěwites, the priests, My attendants.  :22  As the host of the heavens is not counted, nor the sand of the sea measured, so I increase the descendants of Dawid My servant and the Lěwites who attend upon Me.’ ” 

We could get caught up in which came first, the morning or evening, but what’s clear from all of the other writings is that day and night are not considered together. It might be that we have an evening/ night, morning/day situation going on. That would make sense if it’s that way and I wouldn’t argue against that. After all, didn’t it happen that way? It was dark then Yahuah spoke light into existence.

Then there’s this: darkness already existed when Yahuah began by making light as his first act of creation. What followed next was the rest of creation that included cycles of day and night. That seems to be confirmed in Yeramiyahu 33:20.

Conclusion: Sabbaths, with the exception of Yome Kippur, are to be observed during the daytime or the “day” which isn’t a part of the night, or a unit called “a day,” as everyone else believes.