Exo 20:9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, Exo 20:10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and 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.
Clearly a "day" is a 24 hour period, or put even more clearly: "evening to morning" = day. Its not rocket science, folks. Its not even science. Its the Creator clearly and repeatedly stating what a day is, what HE did in a day, and what MAN is to do on a day. The same hermenutic from Gen. 1-2 is carried on into Ex. 20...even between verses 9-11. A "day" is a day, not an age. Context and consistant hermenutics is what makes it clear (if the definition "evening and morning" wasn't enough).
I found this today and thought it is helpful: ICR's Defender Bible notes on Ex. 20:11:
"20:11 in six days. This verse, written on stone by God’s own hand (Exodus 31:18) settles once and for all the question of the meaning of “day” in the creation chapter (Genesis 1). Man was to work six days and rest one day because God did; in fact, God took six days, instead of a single instant, to finish His work of creating and making all things to be a model for humanity (Genesis 2:1-3). God’s week was of precisely the same duration and pattern as man’s regular week. The Hebrew word for “days” (yamim), furthermore, is used over seven hundred times in the Old Testament, and cannot be shown ever to require any meaning except that of literal days, certainly never to anything comparable to geological ages. Still further, “all that in them is” was made in the six days; nothing had been made previously, as the gap theory of Genesis would require. There seems to be no legitimate exegesis of Genesis that can ever allow for the theoretical ages of evolutionary geology. Further, no such gap is necessary; all the data of rocks and fossils are much better explained in terms of the great Flood. It is also significant that other human measurements of time (day, month, year) are keyed to astronomical processes. The universal week, however, has no astronomical base whatever. We keep time in weeks simply because God does!"
*Update*
I also came across more info:
http://www.icr.org/creation-recent/
"The Hebrew word for day (yom) is used some 3,000 times in the Hebrew Bible, and is almost always used to mean an ordinary 24-hour day-night cycle. On the few occasions where it is used to mean an indeterminate period of time, it is always clear from the context that it means something other than a 24-hour day (day of trouble, day of the Lord, day of battle, etc). Whenever it is used with an ordinal (1, 2, 1st, 2nd, etc.), it always means a specific day, an ordinary24-hour day.
The language of Genesis 1 appears to have been crafted so that no reader would mistake the word use for anything other than an ordinary 24-hour day. The light portion is named “day,” and the dark portion is named “night.” Then the “evening and the morning” is Day 1, Day 2, etc. The linguistic formula is repeated for each of the six days, a strange emphasis if the words were to be taken as allegorical or analogous to something other than a day-night cycle."
He goes on to say that God wrote the Ten Commandments with His own finger, thus "the most emphatis action every taken by God on behalf of his revealed Word", designating, again, that "day" is a literal day, 24 hour period, per the command of six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, for on the seventh day God rested from Creation.
ICR's article "The Meaning of 'Day' In Genesis" by James Stambaugh is here. This article goes into much more detail grammatically and shows, as if the biblical Christian needs to, that "day" means a normal, 24 hour period of time.
Another good yet short article explaining the same thing is here, and showing how ICR refuses to compromise God's clear truth on this issue.
The issue of the Creation in six literal days is one that shows just what Jesus Christ meant when He said we must come to HIM in childlike faith. This is why childlike faith is so important...this is exactly what Jesus meant to come to Him with such faith. We grow up in HIM, but our faith is simple and trusts completely what His Word has so clearly stated. Our faith and what its placed in doesn't change---it only grows deeper in Him.
Those who lose the simplicity of faith in Christ, fall into the unbiblical trap of man's desperate attempt to dismiss the clear teaching of Genesis 1-2 and its implication of the Sovereign God creating in merely six days. It demotes God, our accountability to Him, and starts the stab at His Word: Did God really say? Did God REALLY mean....? Start that thinking with "day" (and this WASN'T an issue prior to Darwin's day), then the next attack will be on the Fall, on Adam and Eve, and on Jesus Christ Himself. If Scripture is really that complicated, then no child can really believe it, scientists must be our theologians, science must be our new hermenutic, and the rest of the historocity and clarity of Scripture is doubted.
It really is that simple.
2Co 10:17 But HE WHO BOASTS IS TO BOAST IN THE LORD. 18 For it is not he who commends himself that is approved, but he whom the Lord commends.
2Co 11:3 But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.
***UPDATE***
Here's what John MacArthur says about "day" in Genesis:
In verse eight, “And the evening and the morning were the second day.” In verse thirteen, “And the evening and the morning were the third day.” And verse nineteen, “And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.” Verse twenty-three, “And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.” God is talking here about evening and morning, and evening and morning makes twenty-four hour day.
There is no reason to feel that we have to try to harmonize this evolutionary monstrosity with the Scripture. The Bible claims the earth was created in six days, the seventh day God rested. Now that’s all we really need to know. But I would just draw your attention to Exodus 20:11, which is God’s own commentary on the creation, and this is what He says. Verse nine - “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work.” Does that mean six literal days or does that mean six years, or six decades, or six million, billion, trillion, geological ages? Oh, no. It means six days. You work for six days, you get a day off. “But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God,” don’t do any work, nor your son or your daughter, your manservant or your maidservant, your cattle your stranger and so forth. Why? “For in six days the Lord made the heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day…” You see the parallel there demands a six day creation to equate it with a six day working and one day off Sabbath. It’s clear.
The Hebrew word yowm for days, always in the plural form means a literal day. Never an indefinite period. Always a literal day. But the reason that evolutionists need twenty billion years is that they can’t figure out how come things got the way they are. Because they don’t want to believe in God. And they can’t say God created man, they don’t want to give God that right, so they have to get man to evolve and that takes a long time. Incidentally, the ordinals, the ordinals you know are first, second third, the ordinals, the first day, the second day, the third day, the fourth day, are used in connection with a given day. The word day is used at least fourteen hundred and eighty times in the Old Testament and always with an ordinal the meaning is a twenty-four hour day. Never anything else.
End qote.
More from Dr. John MacArthur:
Now as we have already learned in our study of origins in the study of the first Chapter of Genesis, it is sheer foolishness scientifically and it is utter unbelief Biblically to impose on creation any kind of evolution. Evolution is not a reasonable explanation for the universe or life on earth in any sense whatsoever. It is scientifically impossible, and it is Biblically rejected. If we look closely at the issue of Genesis 1 and creation, we find no evidence of evolution whatsoever in the text of scripture; nor is there any indication by any kind of reasonable science that any form of evolution from species to species could at all take place. And I've suggested to you a number of times, and I do it again, that as you look more closely at the issue of unbelief and denial of the clearly revealed account of creation in the book of Genesis, it is fair to say that anyone who rejects the Genesis creation account, anyone who rejects that God created the universe in six literal 24-hour days, makes an assault on scripture; makes an assault on the historicity of scripture, the accuracy of scripture, the inspiration of scripture, the inerrancy of scripture and the authenticity of scripture.
It is no small thing to deny the straightforward creation account of Genesis Chapter 1. And we could go so far as to say that in actuality, the Bible itself stands or falls with the historical accuracy of Genesis 1. If we cannot trust the creation account, then why should we trust anything else on the pages of scripture? It is sad to say that even the secular world has through the years better understood this than many Christians.
End quote.
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