What Does Genesis 1:3 Mean?

God's first speech-act is "Let there be light," and it comes before the sun is made (which arrives on day four). This is the text's clearest signal that the creation account is theologically ordered, not astrophysically sequential. Light is the precondition; the light-sources are instruments placed within the precondition already established. The pattern of speaking-and-being established here, "God said... and it was," runs through the entire chapter without exception. There is no gap between the word and the event. God does not attempt or try; the speaking is the making.

The Hebrew formula wayyehi or ("and there was light") is the paradigm for every subsequent creative act. Each cycle of "God said... let there be... and it was... and God saw... and there was evening and morning" establishes the absolute efficacy of the divine word. This made the Psalms confident that "by the word of the LORD the heavens were made" (Psalm 33:6) and led the author of Hebrews to say the created world was called into being by what is not visible from within it (Hebrews 11:3). The word that made the cosmos is of a different order than any word spoken within it.

Paul reads this moment as the pattern for the new creation: "For God, who said 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). The physical light of day one is the archetype of every act of divine illumination. The same creative authority that spoke photons into the dark cosmos speaks the knowledge of Christ into the dark heart. Both acts are bara-type events: the Creator calling into being what was not.