What Does Genesis 1:13 Mean?

And there was evening, and there was morning, the third day.

Genesis 1:13 · SDV

Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.

Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

And the evening and the morning were the third day.

THE KEY

The verse counts evening and morning together as one day, placing darkness inside creation’s rhythm rather than outside it.

THE MEANING

Your day has a complete measure: evening and morning belong to one span. The dimming is within that rhythm; morning follows as part of the same whole.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

Darkness means the day has failed or ended.

THE ROOT

עֶרֶב

ʿerev

GROWS FROM

ערב

ʿ-r-b

To become evening or dusk; the same consonants also carry the sense of mingling or intermixing.

English makes evening a time label, but its Hebrew consonants echo words for mixture. That sound-link lets you hear evening as a threshold where one state gives way through overlap, rather than as the day’s abrupt erasure.

ALSO GROWS

ʿerev rav: Mixed multitude

עֵרֶב רַב

The phrase’s first word uses the same consonants as evening and makes their echo of mixture explicit.

hitʿarev: To mingle or mix

הִתְעָרֵב

This verb carries the same consonants as evening, opening a sense of transition through intermingling.

THE PATTERN

Scripture frames night as a bounded interval within a movement toward morning, not as the final state.

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day.

Genesis 1:5 · SDVThe first day is measured by evening and morning together, just as the third day is.

For the burning of his anger lasts a moment, and in his favor is life. Weeping may lodge in the evening, but a ringing cry of joy comes in the morning.

Psalm 30:5 · SDVNight holds a real interval of weeping, while morning still arrives within the larger movement.

The night has cut its way forward, and the day has drawn near. So let us take off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.

Romans 13:12 · SDVThe night is described as passing and the day as near, carrying the movement from darkness toward light into the present.

THE THREAD

And a great mixture went up with them also, and flocks and herds, even very much livestock.

Exodus 12:38 · SDV

The word rendered “mixed” is ⁨עֵרֶב⁩ (ʿerev), sharing the consonants of ⁨עֶרֶב⁩ (ʿerev), “evening.” That echo opens evening as a mingling threshold where one phase of the day gives way to another.

Read the SDV Bible.

Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.

Get Selah Verse

The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.

Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us