Psalm 90:4
PS 90:4 For a thousand years in Your sight Are like yesterday when it passes by, Or as a watch in the night.
Psalm 90:4 (NASB)
- This passage is used to support that the days of creation were long periods of time. The passage makes a comparison of 1,000 years with: “yesterday” and “a watch in the night.”
- This Scripture passage contains a comparative particle in the original Hebrew to make the comparison between 1,000 years and “yesterday” and “a watch in the night.” The comparative particle is translated into English as “like” or “as.”
- The comparison is not between a day being a literal 1,000 years.
- The comparison is that a thousand years with God are like yesterday, or like a watch in the night, which is even a briefer period of time.
- The meaning of the passage is that God equates time differently from the way we equate time.
Genesis 1 is not depicting how God views time.
- The Genesis context of creation speaks of days in the sense of the creation week during which God created this world and set the measure of the week.
- Genesis 1 does not explain how time is calculated on God’s scale, but how the creation days set the norm for days in the weekly cycle of time - work six days and rest one.
- From a contextual and grammatical point of view comparing Psalm 90:4 to Genesis 1 does not work. Psalm 90 is not a creation psalm.
- Contextually speaking, Psalm 90 does not address the issue of how God regards the days of creation but how God views time.
http://www.truthnet.org/creation/creationdays/
Just because 1,000 years is like a day to God, who is outside or time and not bound by it, doesn’t mean that God had to use 1,000 years every time He used the word *day* as designated by the use of the terms evening and morning.
Compared to eternal, yes, a thousand years is no different than a day, but working within time, it is a significant difference.
God used the terms of evening and morning to clarify which meaning of the word He meant by *yom*.