I'm reading Boman and Genesis 1 this morning and it got me thinking about how we view day and night versus how the ancient Hebrews might have.
For us, the future lies before us, the past behind. Our day starts with the rising sun and when we get out of bed, ready to start a new day - the one that lies in front of us ready to be explored. Day and night designate time periods only, further broken up by hours, minutes and seconds. We're used to looking at it objectively, from the outside, something to be observed and recorded.
The day gradually wanes into night, activity winds down, and once the day has been sufficiently explored we rest, ready to take on a brand new day tomorrow. We focus on what opportunities God might bring us in the day to come, always orienting our sights forward at the "freshness of the new" and "yet to be" that God might bring.
We may take the time to reflect on what God brought that day and thank him for it, hoping that tomorrow we might better recognize his activity in our lives. We might be blind to what the future holds, but it doesn't keep us from peering anyway, maybe even squinting to see a bit more clearly, anticipating the events that might unfold.
A different, but not opposing or a negating, view would be the Hebrew. Their perspective of a day was a bit more subjective, not something to be observed from the outside but something to experience from the inside. Days started with the evening. How peculiar. Their view of light and darkness started with the concept that they represented good and evil, known as a qualitative perspective. Light & Dark, not the sun & moon, is what separated day and night and it is significant to me that in creation God began by seeing light (goodness) as being good and so separating it from darkness (evil) before creating the sun and moon. Light was a gift from God designating his mercy and love, and the sun and moon were given the authority to govern that light during the day and night.
Just as out of chaos and void God brought order to creation, each day starts with darkness and God brings the light from it; he brings salvation from destruction, good from evil, mercy and warmth from cold and darkness. This, combined with Hebrew's time orientation as seeing the past before them laid out in detail with the future behind them and unknown, makes me wonder if they tended to focus not on what God might do for them in the future, but what God has already done for them in the past.
Each day may have been a reminder that he has already brought the day from the night for you, already given you mercy and compassion. The Old Testament seems to focus more on what God had done for the people (deliverance from Egypt, deliverance from exile, etc.) than on what he might do for them (although it certainly does that too).
There also seems to be a focus on using the past events as the primary way to seeing his activity in the future or as showing what God's character is. With this in mind, it is not hard to see why they had unwavering expectations of deliverance from misfortunes. During Egyptian slavery, foreign occupation, exile, etc. there was always the understanding that if they were faithful God would save and deliver, reaching the climax in the Christ event, because that is what the past has shown God to do.
Every time the prophets or Moses or a biblical character pleads with God, they almost always brought past actions into play, reminding him and themselves that that was God's nature, even at times referring to the sun/moon as signs of his goodness and mercy. This is also why depravity of light was seen as an apocalyptic tragedy, because it was a sign of God removing his favor.
I wonder if we would have an easier time recognizing what God does for us in the present if we started each day not focusing on what he might do, but on what he has already done. We might start the day feeling blessed instead of hoping to be blessed.
And I wonder how differently we might live our lives because of it.
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