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Before I read this, I had considered that it was a poetic way of defining a "phase" so to speak, of creation. This article is very interesting. Languages are sometimes not very compatible. I'm wondering if Hebrew uses more imagery as a point of reference in it's language. Something that would be interesting would be to compare is the different interpretations of Genesis and the number of languages that it is translated into. Some of the slightest word changes can bring about a whole different meaning. Another thing to keep in mind is the time frame that the Bible was translated into English in. I have not researched this yet. But, whoever does the translating is going to relate the interpretation to their own points of reference. This paragraph is a good example.

Nachmanides says the text uses the words "Vayehi Erev" -- but it doesn't mean "there was evening."He explains that "the Hebrew letters Ayin, Resh, Bet -- the root of "erev" -- is chaos. Mixture, disorder. That's why evening is called "erev", because when the sun goes down, vision becomes blurry. The literal meaning is "there was disorder." The Torah's word for "morning" -- "boker" -- is the absolute opposite. When the sun rises, the world becomes "bikoret", orderly, able to be discerned. That's why the sun needn't be mentioned until Day Four. Because from erev to boker is a flow from disorder to order, from chaos to cosmos."

These are very abstract thoughts in Hebrew. The person translating closest point of reference was "morning"? Maybe they were trying to be poetic. Perhaps they were trying to make an abstract image more concrete.