Absolute Creation in Six Ordinary and Consecutive Days

By Anthony Rogers

Introduction

This paper sets forth a Biblical case for believing in absolute or extraordinary creation in six ordinary and consecutive days. By extraordinary creation I mean that Genesis 1:1-2:3 teaches the absolute beginning and subsequent formation of all things by divine fiat. By six ordinary days I mean normal, 24-hour days. By consecutive days I mean that the days of creation follow one another in a contiguous fashion without any gaps.

I. Absolute Creation

The following points, some weightier than others, support the conclusion that bereshit is absolute rather than in construct and that Genesis 1:1 is an independent statement that teaches the absolute beginning and creation of all things by God.

1. While the word bereshit does not have the article in Genesis 1:1, and for that reason could, apart from other considerations, be viewed as standing in construct with the finite verb, this is by no means necessary since words pertaining to time do not need to be articular in order to be absolute. For example, bereshit is absolute in Isaiah 46:10 even though it lacks the article, and rosh is absolute in Proverbs 8:23 even though it is anarthruous.[1]

2. When a noun precedes a finite verb it is ordinarily the case that either the form of the noun or the context will make it clear that the noun is in construct. Neither applies in this case.

3. The Massoretes understood bereshit to be absolute rather than in construct since they gave the word its own accent and separated it from what comes after it by the disjunctive Tiphcha.[2]

4. The view that bereshit in Genesis 1:1 is absolute and that the entire sentence is independent is found in all the ancient versions, q.v. the Septuagint, the Targums, the Syriac, the Ethiopic, etc.

5. 2 Maccabees 7:28 shows that this was how certain Jews during the intertestamental period viewed creation: “I beseech you, my child, to look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed. Thus also mankind comes into being.”

6. To view verse 1 as subordinate to verse 2, or verse 2 as parenthetical and verse 1 as subordinate to verse 3, exchanges the simplicity and natural progression of thought for a more cumbersome and awkward expression.[3] This view directs attention away from verse 1 to verse 2 or verse 3 and renders unnecessary any mention of “the beginning.”[4]

7. Viewing verse 1 as a simple and independent clause is more fitting and expected at the start of a work like Genesis.[5]

8. The use of the word bara, while it does not of itself indicate creation from nothing (e.g. Genesis 1:21, 25),[6] is only used for divine activity in the Qal stem, thus making it the word that would be chosen to communicate creation from nothing. With respect to the specific use of bara in Genesis 1:1, this is how it should be taken since “when no existing material is mentioned as to be worked over, no such material is implied. Consequently, this passage teaches creatio ex nihilo…”[7]

9. The New Testament speaks of absolute creation. The Triune God alone was in the beginning and all things were made by Him and through Him (John 1:1-3; cf. Romans 11:36). The ages were made by the word of God (Hebrews 1:1-3) and what we now see did not arise from things that appear (Hebrews 11:3). He is before all things and created all things, whether in heaven or on earth, whether visible or invisible (Colossians 1:15-17). He calls into being that which does not exist (Romans 4:17). Indeed, time itself had a beginning, being concreated with extra-deical reality[8]: “who saved us and called us with a holy calling…according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began” (2 Timothy 1:9); “in hope of eternal life which God…promised before time began” (Titus 1:2; see also John 9:32).

10. The idea of preexistent matter would posit an eternal dualism utterly contrary to Biblical theism and the Christian worldview.[9] The Bible everywhere assumes and often asserts a fundamental distinction between God and everything else. Eternality, immutability, and aseity are applied to God alone in Scripture and are never predicated of the world; indeed, the opposite is often stated.

II. No Gap

According to the gap theory verse 2 is to be taken in the sense of sequence. After God created the heavens and the earth Satan and those who followed him rebelled. As a judicial consequence for their rebellion God judged Satan and his hosts and the world was reduced to the state mentioned in verse 2. This view faces several insuperable problems:

1. The gap theory gives short shrift to and dispenses with the original creation and formation of the universe in single verse.

2. Verse 2 begins with a conjunctive vav and is not properly viewed as sequential but as circumstantial either to verse 1 or verse 3. In light of the foregoing, verse 2 is best viewed as circumstantial to verse 1 and as describing the state of affairs that resulted from God’s initial act of creation rather than to something that happened subsequent to an unmentioned gap.

3. Genesis is completely silent about a rebellion and judgment that took place between what is described in verses 1 and 2. The rest of Scripture also says nothing about this idea.[10] As Karlheinz Rabast said, “it is unlikely that Scripture would pass over such a great catastrophe in silence when it mentions in this context less important matters.”[11]

4. In positing a judgment on the world prior to the creation and the fall of man, the Gap-Theory flies in the face of the teaching of Genesis 1-3 that death and decay entered into the world as a result of Adam’s sin, a view also taught in the New Testament (e.g. Romans 8).

5. According to the Gap-Theory the earth was strewn with dead animals and creatures, which is contrary to the fact that God pronounced the finished creation as “very good.”

6. Pre-Christian Jews understood the creation of the heavens and the earth to be a part of the work of the first day: “And I said, O Lord, you spoke from the beginning of the creation, even the first day, and said: ‘Let heaven and earth be made;’ and your word was a perfect work” (2 Esdras 6:38). This runs contrary to the gap theory since it includes the initial creation of heaven and earth with the creation of light as part of the work of the first day, which precludes inserting an unmentioned fall and judgment into a non-existent gap. This view also lends further support to the idea that Genesis 1:1 is properly viewed as an independent statement that speaks of the absolute beginning of all things.[12]

Support for the Gap-Theory is often sought in Genesis 1:28, where Adam and Eve are told to “replenish” the earth, but such an appeal depends upon the rendering in the Authorized Version. The Hebrew word means “fill.” Another argument for the gap theory is based on Isaiah 45:18, which says that God did not create the earth in vain but “formed it to be inhabited.” Since Genesis 1:2 says the earth was uninhabited and uninhabitable, gap-theorists reason that something must have happened to God’s original creation. This argument ignores the fact that Genesis 1:2 describes a temporary state of affairs that was overcome by the work of the six days.

III. Normal Days

When Genesis 1 uses yom to refer to each one of the six days of creation it undeniably means a normal day. There are at least eleven reasons for drawing this conclusion:

1. The Prima Facie Meaning

That the days of Genesis are normal days is apparent on the face of it. In other words, it is the natural impression on one’s first reading of the text. The PCA CSC Report on creation lists this under the “strengths” of the normal day view.[13] Opponents of creation in six days also make this observation. R. Laird Harris, an advocate of the Day-Age view, said: “I…freely admit that the view that the days were 24-hour days is a natural first reading of the chapter, especially in the English.”[14] So likewise Miller and Soden, who favor a framework approach to Genesis 1: “We understand why today’s reader naturally thinks of a literal day when reading Genesis 1, and we would assume that the reader in Moses’ day probably thought the same thing.”[15] While Harris, Miller, Soden and many others argue against what they admit to be the natural reading of the text, their admission demonstrates that the leading and working assumption in all further study of the text ought to be that it took place in six ordinary days, and that only strong reasons to the contrary should be allowed to overturn what is ostensible to everyone. Moreover, such strong reasons should be in accord with the clear meaning of the words, grammar, and context rather than based on enigmatic or esoteric meanings or abstruse reasoning not readily discernible from the text by the average reader. As Robert Reymond reminds us, no one was present to witness the creation events of Genesis 1, and what we have is a direct revelation of God to Moses, the man to whom God spoke directly and clearly:

“…in light of the fact that God declared in Numbers 12:6-8 that when he spoke to Moses, unlike the manner in which he would speak to the prophets who would follow him, he would ‘speak to him mouth to mouth, clearly [mar’eh] and not in enigmas [hidhoth],’ I would suggest that we may and should assume at the outset of our argument that the creation account in Genesis 1 describes ‘clearly and not in engimas’ the divine activity during the creation week, that is to say, we may assume that we will not need to discover the subtly hidden true meaning of the text that lies beneath and is something other than the ordinary meaning of the words of the text.”[16]

Those who argue against six-day creation often state that creation in six normal days through a series of successive fiats makes God deceptive for giving everything an appearance of age. However, they often do not see the irony in saying that Genesis one has the appearance of teaching ordinary days, which opens them up to this very charge. This exposes the error of giving priority to autonomously interpreted general revelation rather than to special verbal revelation, the latter of which ought to serve as the lens through which one interprets the former.

2. Literal Meaning

The literal meaning of yom is that of a twenty-four hour period or the portion of a day during which the light shines. Every other meaning is secondary and derivative and must either be demanded either by the context, of which nothing relevant to this can be found in Genesis, or by the grammar, such as in Genesis 2:4, 35:3, et alia, where yom is used with a bet preposition, yielding the meaning of “when” or “in the time of.” Since sound exegesis requires taking a word according to its literal signification unless the context or grammar dictates otherwise, the use of yom in reference to the days of creation should be understood literally.[17]

3. Predominate Usage

Closely related to the above, and as might be expected given the literal meaning of the term, yom is used according to its basic or literal meaning the vast majority of times that it occurs in the Old Testament in general and in the writings of Moses in particular. As is true when it comes to the literal meaning of a given term, so also here, one should assume that a word is being used according to its predominate usage unless contextual factors require a different understanding.

4. Never means long ages

Although the word yom can sometimes mean something other than a normal day, particularly when used with prepositions or in the plural, it never refers to long ages. Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 are frequently brought forward as counter-examples, as exemplified by Ross and Archer when they say, “Moses seems to state [in Psalm 90:4 – AR] that just as God’s ways are not our ways (Isa. 55:9), God’s days are not our days.”[18] However, as Berkhof pointed out:

“This argument is based on a confusion of time and eternity. God ad intra has no days, but dwells in eternity, exalted far above all measurements of time. This is also the idea conveyed by Ps. 90:4 and II Pet. 3:8. The only actual days of which God has knowledge are the days of this time-space world. How does it follow from the fact that God is exalted above the limitations of time, as they exist in this world, where time is measured by days and weeks and months and years, that a day may just as well be a period of 100,000 years as one of twenty-four hours?”[19]

Indeed, that is the very point of the comparison in Psalm 90 and 2 Peter 3, and there would be no comparison if the word “day” did not refer to a normal day.

5. Ordinal Adjective

The first day uses the cardinal number, yom echad, while all subsequent instances use ordinal adjectives, yom sheni, yom shelishi, yom rebii, etc. As Keil and Delitszch pointed out, the use of the cardinal number for the first day indicates the start of a series: “ehad (one) like eis and unus, is used at the commencement of a numerical series for the ordinal primus…,”[20] and as Dave Bush has demonstrated:

“There are thirty-four occurrences of the construction yom ecad [sic] in the entire Old Testament. All of these texts make sense when understood as literal 24-hour days. There is not one text among all of them that can be verified to be anything but literal.”[21] (Italics original)

Moreover, of the 119 times yom is used with ordinal adjectives in the writings of Moses, as well as in the 357 times this occurs in the rest of the Old Testament, it always indicates normal days (e.g. Numbers 29). In spite of this, Ross and Archer state:

“…the rules of Hebrew grammar do not require that yom must refer to 24 hours, even when attached to an ordinal. Hosea 6:2, for example, prophesies that ‘after two days [God] will revive [Israel]; on the third day he will restore us.’ For centuries Bible commentators have noted that the term days in this passage (where the ordinal is used) refers to a year, years, a thousand years, or maybe more.”[22]

If this interpretation of Hosea 6:2 is correct, not only would it be the exception that proves the rule, but since such an idiomatic usage is not exemplified in the Torah or anything contemporaneous with it and can only be found once in a much later Old Testament book, it would only serve as evidence that yom plus ordinals came to be used in this way later in Israelite history. It is hermeneutically illicit to read the meaning found in a single instance in a later book back into Genesis. In addition, as Douglas Kelly has pointed out, this interpretation is far from certain or necessary:

“Since it is not absolutely certain what the prophecy means (does it refer to the restoration of Israel to the land? Does it refer to the resurrection of Christ, and thus, that of His people in Him?) we are in no position clearly to deny a sequence of three normal days. At very least, such a reference is far too weak to disestablish the universal Scriptural usage of ordinals connected with days meaning ordinary solar days.”[23]

Since there is another viable way of taking Hosea 6:2, this text can’t be pressed as proof against the otherwise clear universal usage, and it can’t be used to prove that such a usage was employed by Moses.

6. Evening and Morning

The days of Genesis 1 are further delimited to be a normal days by the reoccurring phrase “evening and morning,” which always refers to the period of darkness that concludes a day and the morning that follows it both in the writings of Moses (Exodus 27:21; Leviticus 24:3; and Numbers 9:21) and in the rest of the Old Testament (Psalm 55:17; Daniel 8:14, 26).[24]

Nevertheless, according to some opponents of the literal-day view, since the seventh day does not include the phrase “and there was evening and morning,” then the seventh day has not yet ended and “day” in this instance refers to a long period of time.[25] Not only does such a view tacitly acknowledge that “evening and morning” points to an ordinary day, in which case days one through six are properly viewed as normal days, but as Robert Reymond poignantly observed, there is a good reason the seventh day does not have the same concluding formula as the other six days: “..because the divine activity on the Sabbath day differed in character from that on the first six days (rest over against work), a different concluding formula was appended to indicate not only the end of the seventh day but also the end of the creation week.” The formula Reymond had in view here is: “By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.” Reymond concluded: “These words suggest an end of the seventh day as surely as do the words ‘and the evening and the morning were the first day.’”[26] As well, since Genesis does not go on to speak about an eighth day, it is not to be expected that it would continue the pattern of concluding it like the other days. This unique conclusion also allows for the Sabbath to function as a type of the eternal rest that remains open for the people of God. Another problem for the idea of an unending Sabbath is that it would mean that man could never keep God’s command to imitate Him in working six days and resting on the seventh.

7. Sun and Moon

When Sun and Moon (and stars) were created on day four, we are expressly told that they are to “separate the day from the night” (1:14), “separate the light from the darkness” (1:18b), and to “govern the day and the night” (1:18a). More specifically their purpose is for “the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night” (1:16), and all of this is referred to as a day and has the same concluding formula as found in the previous days. In other words, Sun and Moon were created to regulate or govern the state of affairs that was supernaturally taking place on the days one through three, i.e. the alternation of light and darkness, and “The identical word (yom) and phraseology (“evening and morning,” numerical adjectives) associated with days four through six are employed of days one through three, which compel us to understand those days as normal earth days.”[27]

8. Divine Fiat

The fiats issued on each of the six-days, where God says, “be,” followed by, “and it was so,” point to the immediate and instantaneous nature of God’s creative activity on each day and to the fact that the works of each of the days of creation refer to discrete events. This runs contrary to the idea of protracted labor or long periods of natural progression. This is also how the rest of the Old Testament speaks of creation (e.g. Psalm 33:6-9, 148:1-6).

9. The Sabbath Command

The teaching of Genesis that God created the world over the course of six days and rested on the seventh is the foundation for the command for man to work for six days and observe one day in seven as a holy rest.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work….For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy (Exodus 20:8, 11).

For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, holy to the LORD; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall surely be put to death….It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from labor, and was refreshed (Exodus 31:15, 17).

The logic is simple and straightforward: because God worked for six days and rested on the seventh, therefore God’s people, in imitation of Him, are to do the same. The clear import of this is that creation took place over the course of six normal days. It should not be missed, as Reymond reminds us, that this is but to apply the classical protestant hermeneutic that Scripture interprets Scripture.[28] Moreover, as Ben Shaw has pointed out:

In both places the expected preposition b seems to be missing. This is the use of the accusative of temporal determination, a usage that indicates how long an action took. That is, ‘during six days God made the heavens and the earth.’ This use implies both that the days were normal days, and that the days were contiguous.[29](Italics original)

Since the above passages use the precise phrase “during six days” they preclude the idea that God’s pattern of working and resting is merely providing us with an analogy rather than the very amount of time during which creation took place and that we are to imitate.

10. Plural Yom

In addition to the fact that yom always refers to an ordinary day unless the context and grammar indicate otherwise is the fact that the plural form, yamim, in all of its 608 occurrences, always refers to ordinary days.

11. Alternative Idiom

A final argument that establishes the normal day view is that if Moses intended to indicate long ages rather than normal days, then he had an alternative word at his disposal, namely olam, which would more easily lend itself to such a view.[30] The fact that Moses could have used this word and yet chose not to, and in fact chose a word and phrases that consistently point in the opposite direction, strongly favors the conclusion that the days of creation were six normal days.

IV. Sequential

E. J. Young was certainly correct when he said: “It is questionable whether serious exegesis of Genesis one would in itself lead anyone to adopt a non-chronological view of the days for the simple reason that everything in the text militates against it.”[31] Among the facts that militate against a non-chronological view are the following:[32]

1. The genre of Genesis is that of historical narrative. Since Genesis 1 is both the beginning and part of a historical narrative, it ought to be read as historical narrative.

2. The ordinary mark of Hebrew narrative, the vav consecutive, is used over 55 times in Genesis 1. There are no comparable examples of this phenomenon anywhere in Scripture that are properly interpreted as non-sequential.

3. The creation days of Genesis 1 are modified by ordinal adjectives, yom sheni, yom shelishi, yom rebii, etc., which always indicate chronology in the writings of Moses as well as in the rest of Scripture.[33]

4. The phrase “evening and morning” indicates the completion of one day followed by another. The three other times this expression is used by Moses also carry this meaning (q.v. Exodus 27:21; Leviticus 24:3; Numbers 9:21).

5. Psalm 104 is patterned after creation and reflects the same order found in Genesis 1 (Day 1: v. 2a; Day 2: vv. 2b, 3; Day 3: vv. 5-18; Day 4: vv. 19-23; Day 5 vv. 24-26).

6. Man is created last as the crown and apex of creation. To argue that the order is not chronological and does not matter is to run contrary to the apostles’ approach to such matters in the NT.

7. If the days of Genesis do not indicate sequence, then it cannot be argued that the seventh day followed the other six and continues to this very day.

Conclusion

Numerous alternative views to the normal day view have been proposed, and though they have not all been directly addressed in this paper due to space constraints, the positive case that has been presented for extraordinary creation in six ordinary and consecutive days by the supernatural agency of God goes a long way in showing that such views are not correct.

“Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created.” (Revelation 4:11)

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NOTES

[1] Ben Shaw, “The Literal-Day Interpretation,” in Joseph Pipa, Jr. & David W. Hall, Did God Create in 6 Days? (White Hall, W. Va.: Tolle Lege Press, 2005) 199, points out that a common but erroneous assumption on the part of those who take bereshit as a construct is the idea that the creation account in Genesis is parallel to the Enuma Elish, an observation also made earlier by E. J. Young, Studies in Genesis One (Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co., 1999), 23-24. [2] Ed Konig, “Notes on the Book of Genesis in Hebrew,” in W. Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor, Vol. VII (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1898), 203; and E. J. Young, ibid., 5. See also Rabbeinu Bahya, Bereshit 1:1. [3] Allis, God Spake By Moses: An Exposition of the Pentateuch (Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co. 1989), 9. [4] Leupold, Exposition of Genesis, Vol. 1, Ch. 1-19 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1942), 39. [5] Spurrell, Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Book of Genesis (Oxford: Clarendon press, 1887), 2. [6] O. T. Allis, Ibid., 9. [7] H. C. Leupold, Ibid., 41. [8] William Ames, The Marrow of Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1997), 102. [9] See Cornelius Van Til, “The Doctrine of Creation and Christian Apologetics,” in The Journal of Christian Reconstruction, Vol. 1 (Summer, 1974), 69-80. [10] Allis, ibid., 10; Franz Delitzsch, Old Testament History of Redemption (Peabody, Massachussettes: Hendrickson Publishers, 1988), 13-14. [11] K. Rabast, Die Genesis, as cited in Douglas Kelly, Creation and Change: Genesis 1.1-2.4 in the Light of Changing Scientific Paradigms(Fearn, Ross-shire: Mentor, 1997), 96. [12] This has also been the understanding of many Christian worthies throughout the centuries. For example, Wilhelmus a’Brakel wrote, “Generally we understand the verb ‘to create’ to refer to the generation of matters [sic], either out of nothing as was the case on the first day, or out of formless matter created on the first day, the latter being the method by which God created on the five succeeding days,” The Christian’s Reasonable Service, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2007), 265, cf. 272-274; and Francis Turretin said, “The works of the first day are reckoned as three (the heaven, the earth and light) according to those first words of Genesis…,” Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol. 1 (Philipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1992), 447. [13] Creation Study Committee Report to the 28th General Assembly, June 21, 2000. http://www.weswhite.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Creation-report.pd

[14] R. Laird Harris, “The Length of the Creative Days in Genesis 1,” in Pipa and Hall, ibid., 103. Archer, also a day-age proponent, makes a similar statement: “From a superficial reading of Genesis 1, the impression received is that the entire creative process took place in six twenty-four-hour days,” A Survey of Old Testament Introduction (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1994), 181. [15] Johnny V. Miller and John M. Soden, In the Beginning…We Misunderstood: Interpreting Genesis 1 in Its Original Context (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2012), 165. [16] Robert L. Reymond, Contending for the Faith: Lines in the Sand that Strengthen the Church (Vallecito, CA: Chalcedon Foundation, 2001), 43.

[17] Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1991), 154; Robert Reymond, Contending, 40.

[18] Hugh Ross and Gleason L. Archer, “The Day-Age View,” in David G. Hagopian, ed., The G3n3s1s Debate: Three Views on the Days of Creation (Mission Viejo, CA: Crux Press, 2001), 147. q.v. also Harris, “Creative Days,” ibid., 107, 109.

[19] Louis Berkhof, ibid., 153. [20] C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, Vol. 1: The Pentateuch (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), 50, as cited by Benjamin Shaw, “Literal-Day,” in Pipa & Hall, ibid., 216. [21] Dave Bush, “Non-Literal Days in Genesis 1:1-2:4: Exegetical or Hypothetical?,” in Andrew P. Sandlin, ed., Creation According to the Scriptures: A Presuppositional Defense of Literal, Six-Day Creation (Vallecito, Ca: Chalcedon Foundation, 2001), 87. [22] Ross and Archer, “Day-Age,” ibid., 148. [23] Douglas F. Kelly, ibid., 107-108, fn1. [24] The inverse of this phrase, i.e. “the morning and the evening,” occurs many more times and also always refers to a normal day: Exodus 18:13, 14; 1 Samuel 17:16; 1 Chronicles 16:40; 2 Chronicles 2:4, 13:11, 31:3; Ezra 3:3; Job 4:20; Psalm 65:8; Isaiah 21:12, 28:19 (cf. Acts 28:23). [25] E.g. Harris, ibid., 109-110; Miller and Soden, ibid., 52; et alia. [26] Robert Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith (Nashville: T. Nelson, 2001), 393, fn11. [27] Kenneth L. Gentry, “Reformed Theology and Six-Day Creation,” in Sandlin, ibid., 54. [28] Reymond, ST, 394. [29] Shaw, ibid., 215. [30] Gentry, “Six-Day Creation,” Sandlin, ibid., 55; Reymond, ST, 394. [31] E. J. Young, ibid., 101 [32] The first five points below were culled from Joseph Pipa, Jr., “From Chaos to Cosmos: A Critique of the Non-Literal Interpretations of Genesis 1:1-2:3,” in Pipa & Hall, Ibid., 180ff. [33] The first day begins with the cardinal number, yom echad, but when used in a list followed by ordinals it often means first (e.g. Genesis 2:11).