Woodcut from Nicolas Camille Flammarion: L’Atmosphere – Météorologie Populaire. Paris 1888. Coloration: Heike Forests Hugo, Vienna 1998
If the Sun Is Created on Day 4, What Is the Light on Day 1?
Commentators have struggled with this question for centuries, but ancient cosmology offers a compelling solution.
Published October 28, 2016
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Last Updated September 7, 2026
See, for example, Dick Fisher’s, “The Days of Creation: Hours or Eons?”
One creative—but still apologetic—alternative to this is Gerald Schroeder’s theory that day refers to 24 hours, as suggested by traditional Jewish commentators, but that it is measured in relative time (in the Einsteinian sense). See his article, “The Age of the Universe.”
This position is quoted again in this same passage, but in the name of Rabbi Jacob:
אור שברא הקדוש ברוך הוא ביום ראשון אדם צופה ומביט בו מסוף העולם ועד סופו, דברי רבי יעקב.
The light which the Holy One, blessed be He, created on the first day one could see and look thereby from one end of the world to the other; this is the view of R. Jacob.
Moreover, it is only of interest because of his preconceived notions that the sun must have existed from day one and that all light comes from the sun.
Also, although Malbim is correct that the moon and the planets receive their light from the sun, he is, of course, wrong about the stars that are simply “suns” in their own right farther off in space.
This text appears in AlHaTorah.org’s online Mikraot Gedolot, an excellent resource forparshanut, especially for texts that appear only in manuscript.
This is not the simple meaning of the verse, which is that God wraps the earth in light.
I take the term “ancient cosmologist” from Ziony Zevit, “Before the Beginning: Appreciating the Thought of an Ancient Cosmologist” TheTorah (2014).
See Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah (San Francisco: Harper, 2001), 10-11.
Weinfeld’s commentary is part of the revised version of the Samuel Gordon’s commentary, reprinted by Galil B.D. Nagar ltd. in 1992.
Wayne Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1998), 138-139.
Ibid., 139.
In a discussion of how the sun maintains its supply of light, Lucretius notes that on cloudy days, when the sun is blocked, daylight diminishes considerably (Of the Nature of Things, book 5, “The World Is not Eternal”), which demonstrates that he knows that daylight is the result of sunlight.
I assume he means “the first three days,” i.e., before the sun was created.
