What Makes a Day?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 22, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 21.

What Makes a Day?

A tract comes to our table declaring that the only Bible day is the light part of twenty-four hours, and that hence the Sabbath day includes only the light part of the day, from sunrise to sunset. Of course every Bible student will know this to be folly, yet one correspondent at least is troubled thereat. Well, what is a day? The word day has three meanings in Scripture: (1) A period of twenty-four hours, consisting of evening and morning, night and day; (2) the light part of this period; (3) an indefinite period of time of a definite character, as the day of salvation, day of judgment, etc. All these uses of the word occur in the first two chapters of Genesis. The word rendered “evening” and “even” is also translated night. Ps. 30:5. The candlestick of gold in the temple with its lamps was lighted to burn every evening, that is, during the night (2 Chron. 13:11), or at least to far in the night (1 Sam. 3:3). The night was counted part of the day. “Day and night seven days,” each day including night and day. Lev. 8:35. The opposite order is often seen, “night and day.” I Kings 8:29; Isa. 27:3; Jer. 14:17; Mark 5:5. “Fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day.” Esth. 4:16. “That this day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice.” Mark 14:30. The angels who came at night sang, “Unto you is born this day.” Luke 2:8, 11. The Sabbath, like the other days of the week, begins with the evening, the dark part of the day. “From even unto even shall ye celebrate your Sabbath.” Lev. 23:32. The Sabbath began when the deep, heavy shadows from the wall began to fall. Neh. 13:19-21. The Jews, bound by a wrong conception of God, would not come to Jesus to be healed till even, after the Sabbath closed. See Luke 4:31, 38, 40; Mark 1:32; Matt. 8:16. All of which and more shows that the Lord’s own day is in length of time like the others, beginning at sunset of the previous day and ending when its own sun sets twenty-four hours later.