The six-day creation account in Genesis is regarded as an allegorical myth by evolutionists and long-age creationists. I propose, however, that this interpretation cannot be maintained in the light of Exodus 31:17. Indeed, this one verse is the Achilles heel of long-age creationism and I have yet to encounter an adequate explanation for it.
In Exodus 31:17, God is reported as saying to Moses, “It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.” Here God is explaining to Moses the theological and historical basis for his Sabbath day command. In the preceding five verses, God has stipulated that the Israelites should observe the Sabbath day of rest and keep it holy, and now, in verse 17, he explains the reason for this command. It is because God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, and his people should continue to follow the same pattern of work and rest.
The grammatical switch from first person (“me”) to third person (“the Lord”) half-way through verse 17 does not indicate that God is not speaking directly in the second half of the verse; it is simply a literary device of grandeur and majesty. When mere humans refer to themselves in the third person, we tend to regard them as pretentious, but it is entirely appropriate for the omnipotent God to do so. Furthermore, this short passage in Exodus 31 is preceded by “Then the Lord said to Moses …” in verse 12 and concluded with “When the Lord finished speaking to Moses …” in verse 18. Thus, everything between these two statements represents the direct words of God to Moses. The Bible translators recognise this by wrapping the entire passage in quotation marks, indicating that it is God who is speaking.
So, we are left with this inarguable fact: In Exodus 31:17, God is recorded as saying that he created the world in six days.
This leads me to ask an important question. It is a question that I have often asked Christians who reject a literal interpretation of the six days of creation. Did God REALLY say this? Are these words, recorded in Exodus 31:17, actually the words of God to Moses? Did he really say to Moses that he created the world in six days?
There are only three possibilities:
- NO – Moses fabricated these words and falsely attributed them to God.
- YES – God did say it, but it is not literally true.
- YES – God did say it and it is true.
There are no other alternatives. So, let’s take a closer look at each of these possibilities.
NO – Moses fabricated these words and falsely attributed them to God.
A person who holds this view might argue that the second half of verse 17 is an insertion by Moses in order to propagate an allegorical myth of a six-day creation. In other words, God did not say this; it is simply Moses ‘creatively’ putting words in God’s mouth to give his allegory more impact.
But if this is the case, it throws into doubt every other supposed statement by God throughout the Bible. If we can discount this quote as a creative fabrication by Moses, how can we have any confidence that any other direct statement by God recorded in the scriptures is not a similar fabrication or embellishment? No serious evangelical Christian holds this view (although such a view is not beyond the reach of liberal Christians!). Evangelical Christians hold to a high view of the authority and inspiration of the scriptures and such a view would prohibit an arbitrary dismissal of biblical statements attributed to God. We cannot simply dismiss this quote as a Mosaic fabrication. God really must have spoken these words to Moses, and we must, therefore, deal with them as the words of God himself, rather than an interpolation from the pen of Moses.
So this brings us to the second possibility:
YES – God did say it, but it is not literally true.
On this view, God did speak these words – he told Moses that he created the world in six days – but it is not literally true. In my regular engagement with Christians who reject a literal interpretation of the six days of creation, this is where they inevitably land. They propose that God was speaking allegorically in this instance and that we should not take his words literally. But this view has two significant problems: the problem of motive and the problem of consequence.
The Problem of Motive
What would God’s motive be in formulating this allegorical myth? If God supposedly took billions of years to create the universe, what reason would he have to not simply declare this? Why would he concoct this allegorical myth? Three reasons are proposed:
(i) To give a non-scientific explanation to a non-scientific ancient people.
This view involves the assumption that the six-day account is less scientific than a long-age description. But a statement about God taking billions of years to create the universe would be equally unscientific because whether he took 14.5 billion years or six days, both possible explanations involve God SPEAKING the universe into existence MIRACULOUSLY from NOTHING. Both alternatives are equally non-scientific because God’s means of creation was miraculous – irrespective of how long he took to complete the task.
(ii) To give a simpler account to a simple ancient people.
This follows on from the previous point but adds a further nuance to the proposed argument. On this view, God needed to simplify the explanation of creation to make it easier for people to understand and believe. But this doesn’t make any sense either. In fact, this argument is counterintuitive. Surely it is HARDER to believe that God created our amazing universe in just six days, not easier. Given how vast and complex the universe is, it would be totally understandable if God took billions of years to create it. If that were the case, all God would need to have said to the Israelites would be that he took a very long time to create our vast universe, and these ancient people would have completely understood. Conversely, the fact that a six-day creation narrative is HARDER to understand rather than easier is evident by the large number of people today who have difficulty believing it. A supposed six-day creation myth is not easier to understand or believe.
Furthermore, nowhere else in the scriptures do we find God modifying his explanation of his miraculous actions to make it easier for people to understand and believe. God’s approach throughout the entire Bible is to not water down his greatness or obfuscate the truth about himself by concocting a myth. Rather, his approach to mankind is consistently, ‘This is who I am and this is how great I am, disbelieve it at your peril’.
(iii) To engage with the false creation myths in the surrounding cultures.
According to this view, God used an allegorical myth to engage with and correct the false creation myths that were proposed by other cultures at the time. There were three main pagan creation myths that the ancient Israelites may have encountered.
Babylonian mythology proposed that the world arose from a conflict between two gods, Marduk and Tiamat, who emerged from the primordial waters of chaos and fought each other. Tiamat was defeated and her body was split in two, forming the heavens and the earth, with mankind being formed from her blood. Egyptianmythology proposed that the god Ra emerged from the primordial waters and created other gods who represented air, water, sky and earth, and these secondary gods then created each of these elements. Canaanite mythology proposed that the world arose from a cosmic struggle between two gods, Baal and Yam (the sea god), with creation coming into existence when Yam was ultimately defeated and the sea was driven back to form dry land.
Some long-age creationists today argue that God invented his own creation myth as a polemic to engage with these pagan myths. They point to parallels between the biblical creation ‘myth’ and the pagan myths, such as the separation of sky and sea and the separation of land and sea. It is argued that God fashioned his own allegorical myth to correct the false narratives of the surrounding cultures and help his own people to understand the truth.
But, once again, this argument is counterintuitive. Why would God correct myths that were not true by fabricating another myth that is also not literally true? If God took billions of years to create the universe (as long-age creationists propose), surely a simple explanation of that process would have easily refuted these false myths. Indeed, the main point that needed to be corrected was the polytheism of the surrounding nations. God could simply have explained that he alone is the only true God and that he formed the world gradually over many years by the power of his command. This would have been a powerful polemic that would have completely refuted the false myths of the time. Surely the most effective way of countering a false myth is with the truth rather than by fabricating another myth.
Additionally, there would have been no need for God to formulate a six-day myth in order to engage with the pagan myths. None of these popular myths involved ANY temporal timeframe or sequentially structured period of time. The measured, sequential six-day timeframe of the biblical account has no correlation with the pagan myths of the surrounding nations. There is simply no connection between the defined six-day biblical account and the undefined time frames of these pagan myths, so this argument fails completely.
This, then, is the problem of motive. There appears to be no logical reason for God to have fabricated a six-day creation myth if it wasn’t literally true. Each of the three reasons sometimes proposed by long-age creationists is counterintuitive and defies common sense and clear logic. But this is only the first major problem with the view that God spoke words that are not literally true. As well as the problem of motive, there is also the problem of consequence.
The Problem of Consequence
If God’s self-declared six-day creation story is not literally true, God becomes the perpetrator of confusion and error. Millions of people are left believing something that simply isn’t true. In fact, it isn’t even remotely true if God took billions of years to create everything.
Although allegories can be very useful in teaching principles of truth, they are only helpful when the allegory is obvious. The parables of Jesus are a good example. He spoke of lost sheep, lost coins, buried treasure, sowing seeds, and many other physical and agricultural concepts to describe spiritual truth. In all these cases, however, the allegory was obvious and no one would have mistakenly thought Jesus was talking purely about farming. There was no confusion because, in each case, the allegory was clear and obvious.
But in the Genesis creation account and in God’s reference back to it in Exodus 31:17 there is no evident allegory. The language of allegory is not employed. In contrast to the parables of Jesus, there are no grammatical riders or introductory remarks in these passages that give the readers or listeners an indication that what is about to be described is a non-literal allegory. Some people point to the statement at the end of verse 17 that God “rested and was refreshed” on the seventh day and claim that this is clearly allegorical, because the omnipotent God can’t get tired. They then use this to justify an allegorical interpretation for the rest of the verse. However, the Hebrew word for “rest” here does not necessitate the concept of tiredness, but merely describes the cessation of activity. Similarly, the word “refreshed” does not infer a reinstatement of depleted energy, but simply that God experienced joyful delight in reflecting on all that he had made. This is the interpretation that John Calvin makes of this verse:
“It is not to be supposed that God, after the manner of men, ceased from His labours and was refreshed by repose; but that He took delight in the very contemplation of His works.” (John Calvin, Commentary on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, trans. John King (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1847), Volume 1, page106. This is the widely available Calvin Translation Society edition, often reprinted and digitized, including in Calvin’s Commentaries series on BibleHub, CCEL, and Logos).
Thus, the references to rest and refreshment in Exodus 31:17 are easily understood without employing allegory and there is no resulting justification for allegorising the preceding description of a six-day creation. Instead, the six-day creation story is narrated in Genesis 1 as a factual historical account and God’s reference back to it here, in Exodus 31:17, utilises emphatic language with no hint of allegory. If it is meant to be taken as an allegory God has omitted all the necessary grammatical clues that would help us to see this, with the result that many people are left believing it to be true when, according to this view, it is not.
If I tell my children that I took six days to build our house when in reality it took six years, I’m not using allegory, I’m deceiving them.
But God is not the author of confusion and deception. He is the “God of truth” (Isaiah 65:16) whose “words are true” (2 Samuel 7:28). Indeed, “God is not a man that he should lie” (Numbers 23:19). God does not shy away from the truth nor change it to suit the predilections of fallible humans.
So, what are we to make of this statement by God in Exodus 31:17, that he “made the heavens and the earth in six days”? We cannot dismiss this clear statement as a fabrication by Moses without tearing asunder our view of the inspiration and authority of scripture. Nor can we interpret it as a non-literal allegory because to do so defies any logical motive, makes God the author of confusion and falsehood, and is also without any of the usual literary and grammatical markers of obvious allegory.
This leaves us with the only remaining alternative:
YES – God did say it and it is true.
This is the position I hold. In fact, I argue that if all you had was the Bible – that if there were no other voices speaking into your life which were promoting an alternate long-age view of the universe – you would never read Genesis 1 and Exodus 31:17 and interpret these passages as allegorical. They read as literal fact – as historical narrative.
I contend that the allegorical interpretation of the creation narrative arises not from the text itself, but from an underlying acceptance of a long-age narrative and a resulting desire to align the biblical text with that alternate narrative. Even the few second and third century early church fathers who tentatively suggested an allegorical interpretation of Genesis 1 did so in response to the prevailing Aristotelian science and philosophy that proposed an eternally existing universe and cast doubt on the biblical story. Historically, the text itself has never led people to interpret it as an allegory – it has always been the influence of a contradictory cosmogenic worldview that has led Christians to search for an alternate understanding.
Elsewhere I have written extensively about how a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation account is foundational for several key biblical doctrines. There are at least ten of these, but for brevity I mention here just two:
No Death Before Adam
Romans 5:12 says that “death entered the world through Adam” and this accords with God’s curse in Genesis 3 as a result of Adam and Eve’s sin. The Bible is very clear that there was no death in the world in the beginning, that creation was “very good” (Genesis 1:31), and that death only entered the world after the first humans sinned (Romans 5:12). Thus, Romans 8 indicates that because of mankind’s sin, the whole of creation is now in bondage to decay and subject to frustration (Romans 8:20-23).
This is a very different story, however, to the long-age (or deep-time) narrative which proposes that death was an integral part of our world for billions of years prior to mankind’s appearance. Indeed, the theory of evolution proposes that death and dying pervaded the animal world for billions of years before humans existed and were an essential element in the survival of the fittest. These two worldviews – no death before Adam and Eve, compared to billions of years of death before the first humans – are completely irreconcilable. Sadly, many long-age creationists are not aware of this huge contradiction.
Jesus’ Reference to Mankind’s Creation “In the Beginning”
In Matthew 19:4, in response to a question from the Pharisees about divorce, Jesus replies, “Haven’t you read that in the beginning the Creator made them male and female …”. Jesus’ use of the phrase, “in the beginning”, is a reference back to the same phrase in Genesis 1:1 and his statement, “Haven’t you read …?” is a clear reference to the Genesis 1 and 2 creation narrative which proposes that mankind was created on Day 6 of the creation week. This indicates that Jesus is speaking about the very beginning of creation and, significantly, he places the creation of mankind at “the beginning” of creation. The same account in Mark’s Gospel makes this even clearer, quoting Jesus as saying, “In the beginning of creation God made them male and female” (Mark 10:6).
But if deep-time creation is true – if God took billions of years to form the universe rather than just six days – Jesus’ statement is not true. In this view, humans were not made at the beginning of creation, but at the very end. According to long age creationism (and theistic evolution) the universe is 14.5 billion years old and our earth is about 4.5 billion years old, but on this timescale humans only arrived on the scene about 250,000 years ago.
Let me put this into perspective for you. If the billions of years of the world’s supposed evolutionary history were condensed into a 24-hour clock, humans arrived on the scene at FIVE SECONDS to midnight! This would not be “the beginning of creation” as Jesus stated; it would be the very END of creation, the final few seconds of the creation story. This is as far from “the beginning” as you can get!
This is another huge contradiction between the long-age view of creation and the six-day creation narrative of Genesis 1 and 2. Apparently Jesus believed the Genesis creation account and referred to it as an historical fact.
CONCLUSION
Exodus 31:17 is, in my opinion, the Achilles heel of the long-age creation view. God’s clear statement that he “created the heavens and the earth in six days” poses a huge problem for the long-age view. To maintain a deep-time interpretation of creation, one must either claim that Moses fabricated this statement by God or maintain that God did, indeed, speak these words but they are not true. Either position, however, creates huge hermeneutical and doctrinal dilemmas. The first position undermines the inspiration and authority of the scriptures and opens the door for the further dismissal of any other supposed statements by God in the Bible that we may find inconvenient. The second position, that God spoke words that are not true, faces equally huge problems involving counterintuitive, illogical motives as well as consequences that defy God’s very nature as a God of truth. It also invokes allegory in the complete absence of obvious literary foreshadowing and indicative grammatical riders.
It seems to me that the only reasonable interpretation of Exodus 31:17 which is hermeneutically rigorous and theologically consistent with the rest of scripture is that God spoke literal truth when he proclaimed these words to Moses.
In all my discussions with long-age creationists and theistic evolutionists over the years, no one has been able to provide me with an explanation of Exodus 31:17 that denies its literal truth yet is without the logical fallacies, hermeneutical errors and theological inconsistencies that I have highlighted in this paper.
So, let me ask you: what is your view of Exodus 31:17? Did God really say that? And if he did, will you believe him?