Need help with a research question

Ronald Quick

My preacher has asked me to research this:

In Genesis 1:6-8, the second day in the creation account, God does not say "it was good" as in the other days of creation.  Is there any significance to this?

I know that the Septuagint reads differently and does have the phrase "it was good", but according to the Expositor's Biblical Commentary this was probably not the original reading.

Are there any Logos resources that can give me some insight into this?

Thanks.

Graham Criddle

Hi Ronald

I would run a Passage Guide against this passage and see what your commentaries say. Couple of snippets:

Only in connection with this second day is the phrase “and God saw how beautiful it was” absent in the MT. LXX has the phrase, probably artificially and for the sake of consistency. It is unlikely that the LXX represents an earliest form of the Hebrew text. The omission of the phrase in v. 8 may indicate that the author viewed the creation of the vault as only a preliminary stage to the emergence of dry land in v. 10, and thus he reserved the phrase until its most appropriate time. The “waters above” are now edged out of the Creation story and dropped from further concern by the author.

Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1–17 (The New International Commentary on the Old Testament; Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990), 124.

The formula ki tov, “that it was good,” is omitted because rain has no value unless there is dry land to be fructified; the creative acts relating to water are not completed until the third day, the account of which appropriately records the formula twice.

Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (The JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 8.

Graham