The second day of creation - Why was it not good?

[StevieG]

I was wondering if anyone knows of any significance to the creation account not recording the work of the second day as good? Each of the six other days of creation all have God pronouncing that what He had done was good. I realise that we could simply point to the end of the chapter and see God's assessment that everything was very good as a catch all. But it seems like it must be significant that Moses wrote that each day was good, expect this one.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

I was wondering if anyone knows of any significance to the creation account not recording the work of the second day as good? Each of the six other days of creation all have God pronouncing that what He had done was good. I realise that we could simply point to the end of the chapter and see God's assessment that everything was very good as a catch all. But it seems like it must be significant that Moses wrote that each day was good, expect this one.

I don't know if the absence of a "good" pronouncement on day2 has something more to it than the mildest of variation, showing the pattern is not slavish and rote. But perhaps it may be noted that day2 saw the opening of (mostly) empty space--including the air, of course--which would in due course be filled with the birds of day5. The waters (also filled on day5) were already present, but not "gathered together" into the seas (separate from causing the dry land to appear), which took place on day3. The birds that would fill the skies were not bound to soar constantly without the land on which to make their nests; and the land was not yet on day2.

Day2, therefore, is very much an intermediate day of environmental development, in between days that see God introduce radical reversal of steady-state conditions. Where darkness only exists, he introduces light on day1; the dark would never spontaneously generate light. When the waters simply flow over and above the submersed solid beneath, God uplifts that land and hollows out other deeps in order that the water find a limit on day3. Simply separating the waters beneath from the waters above on day2 did not set up fully (but only partly) the conditions for the denizens he would introduce into the full-blown terrestrial environments--land, sea, sky.

 

[StevieG]

Sorry for the delaying in responding to you. Thank you for this message Rev Buchanan. I've gone back over the chapter and that seems to make the most sense and doesn't require trying to read anything in between the lines. If I'm honest this is an example of a passage that I've heard so often, I've clearly just gone into auto pilot and assumed it was there just because that is what my mind expected and so was surprised to finally notice that it was different.

I appreciate you taking the time to help me with this.