Did God make a mistake by creating the plants before creating the sun? Everyone knows that photosynthesis requires light. How could the Creator of the universe make such an error? Or, maybe He didn’t.
First of all, we must realize that Genesis chapter 1 was peer-reviewed by Jesus, and He accepted it as is. Therefore, these Scriptures must be correct. God created vegetation on day three (Genesis 1:11-13) and created the sun on day four (Genesis 1:14-19). So, how does this make sense?
Point one: Photosynthesis and heat were not lacking on day three since God created light on day 1.
Genesis 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Genesis 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. (KJV)
Therefore, on day three, there was no shortage of light or heat; it’s just that the source was not the sun; it was Jesus.
John 8:12 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying,
I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. (KJV Jesus’ words in red)
Point two: At the end of the age, again, there will be light but no sun, as clearly stated in the Bible:
Revelation 22:5 And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever. (KJV)
So, concerning the question, “Why did God create the plants before the sun?” the answer is: the sequence of creation of the sun and plant life doesn’t matter, but it highlights what is essential, and that is that Jesus is the eternal source of light. So, what is the purpose of the sun? The Bible tells us it is to rule the day, and it is for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years (Genesis 1:14-16). The sun is an essential element in the creation, but it is temporal. It supplies light for our brief sojourn here on earth, but one day the sun will cease from shining, and Jesus will provide us with not only our physical light needs but also our spiritual light needs. Jesus is the Light.
Recommended additional reading:
Genesis 1 and 2 Agreement or Contradiction?
Keywords: Jesus is the light; Jesus light; the purpose of light; creation of light; creation sequence; creation sequencing; creation of light
With all due respect, I believe it is an error to assume that Genesis 1:16 is speaking of the initial creation of the sun. Here is a brief explanation….
The word bara can sometimes mean creation ex nihilo, so it is appropriately used in Genesis 1:1. But in Genesis 1:16, the word is not bara, it is asah. Asah has a broad range of meaning, but its most basic sense is ‘to do,’ or ‘to make.’ One of the meanings that asah can convey is ‘to appoint’ (as in 1 Kings 12:31). Try reading asah (translated ‘made’ in Genesis 1:16) as ‘appoint’ (realizing that the context is conveying the functionality of the lights in the sky) and it makes sense. Also, asah in the transitive sense does not mean create. As English speakers, we talk this way too. Today, I ‘made’ the bed. That does not mean I brought the bed into initial existence. Tonight, I will ‘do’ the dishes, but the dishes already exist. Asah means ‘to make’ or ‘to do’ or ‘to appoint’ and none of these imply ex nihilo creation.
I am aware of the occasional use of asah and bara together in the same verse. People sometimes cite Genesis 2:4 as if it shows that asah is a strict synonym of bara meaning ‘to create.’ The common assumption is the meaning of bara applies to asah as well. But the actual analogous pairing is that the meaning of asah applies to bara. This type of pairing is seen in Psalm 51:10, where ‘renew’ [chadash] does not mean ex nihilo creation due to the analogous presence of bara in the same verse. In other words, asah does not have to mean ‘create’ just because it is occasionally paired with bara. Bara, in that case, means ‘to work on.’ In fact, bara very often does not refer to ex nihilo creation, but to working on, or carving, or cutting on something already in existence. In Joshua 17:15, bara is used of people cutting down trees. In 1 Samuel 2:29, bara is used of people ‘carving out of’ a piece of meat.
So we must first learn that bara does not automatically mean ex nihilo creation. Second, we must understand that asah never does. And finally, when these words are used together in the same verse in an analogous pairing, bara adopts the sense of asah, and not the other way around as has been so commonly assumed.
Once these realizations sink in, we can stop saying the God ‘created’ the sun on the fourth day, because the Hebrew text isn’t saying it either.
I believe The Holy Spirit brought me that Jesus was from the beginning , In the beginning was the word ,Jesus is the true word .Jesus said Im am the true Light thoes who follow me will not walk in Darkness .
Maybe: If the Bible said He created the Sun before the plants people would not believe that He created the plants, they would say the Sun created them
The original light source was the divine light and darkness on day one, there was no need for the sun to sustain plants, there can be light without the sun which was made on day three, the Creation Week makes perfect sense with a normal week of seven days.
The hermeneutic of the Presumptuous Jigsaw Puzzle Master
The Day Four view does not treat the Creation account as a straightforward, building narrative about Earth’s ecology. Instead, it treats the account as a jigsaw puzzle each piece of which could just as well be an item on an ‘Inspired, Authoritative, Infallible’ shopping list. Specifically, the view takes what is an authoritatively already-assembled jigsaw puzzle and rearranges some of the main pieces according to how a particular subset of edge or background pieces might be perceived out-of-context: If that subset, unto itself, ‘plainly’ looks like some absurd thing, then that must be what that subset is meant to show.
To put this plainly: Rather than maintaining the sole primary exegetic function of v. 1+ forward, the Day Four view imposes the account’s Day Four portion retroactively on vs. 1-3.
Two pertinent factors of Ancient Hebrew
This retroactive (re)interpretation of vs. 1+ is contrary even to a key grammatical fact of ancient Hebrew. Ancient Hebrew has no pluperfect form of verb, instead relying on the reader’s everyday normal good sense of things, as he naturally knows them, to determine the chronological relation of a given statement to another given statement.
Moreover, that which an ancient Hebrew person would readily perceive of v. 1-3 is that concerning the term ‘darkness’ in v. 2. Such a term commonly was used to imply or identify dense cloud (ex: Job 3, Job 38:9; and Deuteronomy 4:11). Indeed, no one who has never yet known of the account’s Day Four portion would ever get the impression, from the prior portions, that the luminaries had not yet been created.
I believe that plants and trees grew by God’s word and the light(daylight) he created, as well as the mist. And after the sun and moon came into place, it caused the plants to effectively respond to receiving from the sun. Just as the moon’s gravitational effect has on tides etc…