Christians who share the same Bible read the six days of Genesis 1 in at least three ways. Some hold that God made the world in six ordinary days. Others read the days as long ages, and others as a literary pattern. The goal here is to help you study the chapter together without settling who is right. By the end, each person should be able to state all three readings accurately, point to the verses each one leans on, and name the exact point where they part ways. Each person should also be able to say what every reading confesses together. You can work through this alone in one sitting, or with a group across one or two meetings. Bring a Bible, paper and a pen.
The study draws on a Jude 3 Project podcast conversation between Lisa Fields and Dr. Walter Kim, who holds a doctorate in ancient Near Eastern languages and civilizations and serves as president of the National Association of Evangelicals. His contribution comes in the middle, after you have looked at the text yourself.
Start by marking where you stand
Before anyone opens Genesis, take three minutes in silence. Write two sentences. The first finishes this line: When I read the six days of Genesis 1, I think they are… The second finishes this one: If my reading turned out to be wrong, what I would worry about losing is…
Fold the paper and keep it. Nobody has to read theirs aloud, now or later. The second sentence matters most. Arguments about the days often run hot because something else seems to be at stake: trust in the Bible, respect for a parent’s teaching, a science career, a friend who left the faith. Naming that private stake helps you hear other people’s arguments as arguments.
Read the chapter for its shape before its timeline
Have someone read Genesis 1:1-2:3 aloud, slowly, while everyone else follows along. Then read it a second time with a pen in hand and mark three things.
- Every time the phrase And God said appears.
- Every time God sees that something is good.
- Every evening-and-morning line.
Now look at how the chapter opens and how it describes the world before the first day: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Then comes this: “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2).
Draw two columns on your paper. In the left column, list what God makes on days one, two and three. In the right, list what he makes on days four, five and six. Then, before anyone explains anything, describe in a sentence or two what you see when you compare the columns. If you are in a group, hear two or three descriptions before moving on.
Now test what you noticed in both directions. If you saw a pattern, where does it strain? Look closely at the waters and the lights, for instance. Then ask the same of the plain sequence. Where does reading the numbered days as a straightforward timeline strain? Light appears on day one, for example, and the sun on day four. Write down one difficulty for each.
Last, read the sixth day’s account of humanity: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). Compare how much space the chapter gives to this moment with the brief mention of the stars in Genesis 1:16.
Three readings faithful Christians hold
Christians who trust Scripture as God’s Word have read these days in different ways. Each reading below is presented the way its own holders would want it heard, with the texts it leans on and the question it has to answer.
Ordinary days
This reading takes the days as six consecutive days of ordinary length. Most who hold it also conclude the earth is young. Its strongest support is the chapter’s own wording. Each day is numbered and closed with evening and morning: “And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1:5). It also points to the Sabbath command, which grounds Israel’s weekly rhythm in the creation week: “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day” (Exodus 20:11). Its holders ask why a reader should take these days as anything other than days. The question it must answer is how it relates the chapter to scientific evidence for an ancient universe.
Long ages
This reading holds that the order of creation is real but that each day stands for a long period. Its holders note that Scripture uses day flexibly. Right after the creation week, the whole work of creation is described as taking place “in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens” (Genesis 2:4). They also point to Psalm 90:4: “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.” The question it must answer is why each long age would close with evening and morning.
A literary pattern
This reading takes the week as a deliberate structure built to carry a theological message. On this view, the chapter arranges creation by topic to show that God orders and fills everything, and the order serves that message. Its holders point to the repeated refrains you marked and to the symmetry some readers find between the columns. They also point to how the week ends. The seventh day receives no evening-and-morning line: “And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made” (Genesis 2:2). For them, that open-ended final day suggests the week is a crafted pattern. The question it must answer is how it handles the plain numbering of the days and the Sabbath command’s link to them.
What the ancient world adds to the conversation
Kim brings a different question to the table. Instead of asking first how long a day lasted, he asks what the chapter’s first hearers needed to know. His answer: “the kinds of questions that they were concerned were more political than they were scientific.” In his reading, people in Israel’s world wondered whether many gods were at war, whether the universe was safe, and who mattered in it.
He reads Genesis against neighboring creation stories, especially Babylon’s Enuma Elish, where the god Marduk defeats the water goddess Tiamat and splits her body to make the world. “In that worldview, creation is a product of violence, violent conflict among the gods,” Kim says. Genesis is different: “in the biblical worldview, there is no battle. There is a divine word, and that word is not an act of violence.” Look back at the places where you marked And God said. On Kim’s reading, each of those lines answers a frightened question.
He makes the same move with Genesis 1:27. “In the ancient world, typically only the king was created in God’s image,” he says. And then: “Everyone else bore the image of the king at best.” Where Babylon’s story ends by exalting its god and its king, Kim observes that in Genesis “it’s humanity itself that gets crowned.”
Kim does not deny that God could have worked in ordinary days. “God could create everything in six literal days. He has the power to do that,” he says. His claim is about what the chapter was written to settle, and in this conversation he does not attach himself to any of the three labels above. Lisa Fields frames the genre question with a comparison any reader can test: “we don’t read the Psalms like we read the epistles.” She is careful to say that reading Genesis by its genre does not mean treating it as untrue.
This material does not decide between the three readings. A person who holds ordinary days can fully agree that Genesis answers the gods of Babylon. What it can do is reorder the conversation, placing what the chapter plainly claims at the center. Kim is also candid that the science question remains: “I don’t want to diminish that the questions still remain of, okay, so how does science actually relate to this?”
The practice: restate before you respond
This exercise is the heart of the study. Plan on 30 to 40 minutes with a group. Alone, you can do it on paper.
- Assign the readings. Split into three small teams and give each team one reading. If possible, give people a reading they do not hold. Alone, write a page for each.
- Build the best case. Each team has ten minutes to make the strongest case it can from Scripture and the chapter’s own features, such as your columns, the refrains and the verses named above. Caricatures of the other views are off limits.
- Restate it back. After each team presents, someone from a different team restates the case in their own words. The presenting team says whether it was fair. Keep going until they say yes.
- Find the exact hinge. As a whole group, write one sentence naming the precise claim on which two readings differ. For example: Does the Sabbath command in Exodus 20:11 require that the creation days were the same length as Israel’s work week? A sharp sentence like that beats a vague one like they disagree about science.
- List what everyone confesses. Write down what all three readings affirm from Genesis 1. At minimum, God created everything, nothing in creation is a rival god, creation is good, and every human being bears God’s image.
One more question tends to surface: if the days are patterned, was Adam a real person? Treat it as its own question. Kim’s answer is direct: “did Adam and Eve exist? I think yes.” He grounds it in the genealogy of Genesis 5 and in Paul’s argument about two Adams in Romans 5. Of his overall position he says, “I myself tend to fall in this kind of more complex middle.” He sums it up this way: “So yes, history was being told, but history was being told in a certain way.” Not every Christian draws that line where Kim does, but his view shows that a person can read the days as a pattern and still hold a historical first couple.
Questions for the group
- Which reading did you find hardest to state fairly, and what made it hard?
- Look at your list of shared confessions. Does anything on it feel more important to you now than the length of the days? Does anything feel less important than you expected?
- Kim argues the first hearers were asking political questions. What in Genesis 1 itself supports that claim, and what in the chapter, if anything, weakens it?
- What evidence, from Scripture or elsewhere, would actually move you from your current reading to another one? If nothing could, what does that tell you?
- Where does a disagreement about Genesis 1 become a disagreement about whether someone trusts the Bible? Is that move ever justified?
- How would you explain to a skeptical friend why Christians who disagree about the days still share one confession about creation?
If you are leading the conversation
Skip the opening show of hands on the days. It sorts people into camps before anyone has read the text. If someone in the room works in science, or has taught Sunday school for decades, invite their questions without making them the referee. Watch for the person who has been quiet because their family or church holds a reading different from the room’s majority. A simple Is there a case we haven’t made well yet? can open space for them.
If the conversation turns sharp, return to step three of the practice. People rarely stay angry at someone who has just restated their view fairly. Kim describes good disagreement as a call to community, “to see our own blind spots, to learn from people who are different from us.” To those who disagree with him in either direction, his answer is the same: “let’s have that discussion.”
Return to your folded paper
You may keep your first sentence exactly as it was, and that is a fine outcome. Look harder at the second. Is the thing you feared losing actually tied to the length of the days? Or does it sit on the list of confessions every reading shares?
Write one new sentence underneath. It might revise your view, sharpen it, or name a question you want to keep studying. Then think of one person who reads Genesis 1 differently than you do. Ask them to explain their reading, and see whether you can restate it to their satisfaction before you offer your own.