The Day by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Apr 3, 1879

The Day.

By Editor

BEING suddenly called away to attend a funeral last week we did not see the proofs before the paper went to press. We regretted that our answer regarding the use of the word, day, in Gen. 2:17, was not as explicit as it should have been; it related more to its use than its sense, which was the point in the question. It might justly be inferred, however, that we think it is there used in its ordinary or primary sense, of a day marked by the revolution of the earth.

The same word is used nearly one hundred and fifty times in Genesis, both singular and plural, and we doubt that it is used in any other sense than that noticed above, except in Chap. 1:5, where day is used to distinguish the light from the darkness, and in Chap. 2:4, which might be rendered time indefinitely, as the word hour is sometimes used, covering the week of creation. Prof. Green considers this verse poetic, which might have some bearing on its construction. The original is rendered time and age in our version of Genesis, where it might properly have been rendered day definitely.

Besides the Bible usage which would admit of the threatening of Gen. 2:17 referring to Adam's falling under the condemnation of death that day, (on which see further in Man's Nature and Destiny,) there is admissible another view which would allow the threatening to be construed more strictly, namely, that God mercifully interposed and opened to man a new probation, thereby deferring the execution of the threat, as in the case of Hezekiah, Isa. 38, or of the city of Nineveh. Jonah 3: 4-10.