What Does Genesis 1:14 Mean in the King James?
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
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 lights do more than illuminate the sky: they turn time into a sequence of visible appointments.
THE MEANING
Your days and nights are not an undifferentiated stretch: lights distinguish them and mark signs, cycles, days, and years. The sky gives your life a visible rhythm, with appointed times set within the turning of time.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Time is not an empty expanse in which nothing is appointed; this verse presents it as marked and patterned.
THE ROOT
מוֹעֲדִים
mo'adim
GROWS FROM
יעד
To appoint, designate, or set a time.
The Hebrew word rendered “seasons” carries the sense of appointed times. English can make seasons sound like mere divisions of the year, while this root reveals time marked out for particular occasions.
ALSO GROWS
mo'ed: An appointed time, or an appointed gathering.
מוֹעֵד
This is the singular form of the word family in the verse; the lights mark times that can become occasions for gathering.
ya'ad: To appoint or designate.
יָעַד
This verb shows the action beneath an appointed time: it is marked out, not merely passing by.
מְאֹרֹת
me'orot
GROWS FROM
אור
Light; to shine or give light.
The word for “lights” belongs to the same family as the Hebrew word for light itself. Here light does more than make things visible: it makes the rhythm of days and years legible.
ALSO GROWS
or: Light.
אוֹר
This is the root idea carried by the lights that mark the passage of time.
ma'or: A luminary or light-bearer.
מָאוֹר
This related word names a source of light, showing how the verse connects the visible lights with the light they bear.
THE PATTERN
Created rhythms mark time into distinct cycles and appointed occasions.
While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts.And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;THE THREAD
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts.The word מוֹעֵד (mo’ed), an appointed time or gathering, belongs to the same root family as “seasons” here. The lights mark appointed times in the sky; Leviticus uses that same word family for gatherings marked out in time.
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