What Does Genesis 1:13 Mean in the King James?

And the evening and the morning were the third day.

Genesis 1:13 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

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 the evening and the morning were the first day.

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

For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

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

The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

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

THE THREAD

And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle.

Exodus 12:38 · KJV

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.

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