Objection:
The day begins at morning. The phrase “evening and morning” was the first day, doesn’t mean the day begins with evening. From morning to evening is 12 hours. Men go to work from morning till evening (Psalm 104:23). Evening is the end of the day, which is the 12-hour period of the 24-hour day.
Answer:
[This objection was given in response to an answer we gave to the question “WHEN DOES A DAY BEGIN?”]
The question of when a biblical day begins has long invited debate. Many assume the day starts at sunrise, reasoning that a man’s labor stretches “from morning till evening.” Others cite Jesus’ words that there are “twelve hours in the day.” Yet when we allow the Bible to define its own terms, the evidence consistently points to one simple truth: in Scripture, a day begins at evening, not morning or midnight.
The foundation is laid in the very first chapter of Genesis. After dividing light from darkness, God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.” Then the text repeats six times, “And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31). This sequence—darkness followed by light—defines one complete day. If the day began at sunrise, the pattern would naturally read “morning and evening,” but it never does. The creation record, therefore, establishes that the biblical day begins with the setting of the sun, when evening ushers in the next day.
Passages describing human work habits, such as Psalm 104:23—”Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening”—simply refer to the workday, not the chronological beginning of the full twenty-four-hour cycle. The same distinction is made by Jesus when He said, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him” (John 11:9–10). Both passages distinguish between the daylight portion and the night portion, but neither changes the definition of a full day as beginning at evening.
The clearest legal statement comes from the instruction regarding the Day of Atonement: “It shall be unto you a sabbath of rest, and ye shall afflict your souls: in the ninth day of the month at even, from even unto even, shall ye celebrate your sabbath” (Leviticus 23:32). That directive would be unnecessary if a day already began in the morning. From creation to the law, the pattern remains sunset to sunset.
The narrative of the Passover further confirms this reckoning. “And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening” (Exodus 12:6). The lamb was slain at the end of the fourteenth day, and “they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it” (Exodus 12:8). That night belonged to the next day—the fifteenth. “And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning” (Exodus 12:10). The sequence—sacrifice at the close of one day, meal that night, and departure the following daylight—shows that the new day began at evening. Leviticus 23:5–6 reinforces it: “In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the Lord’s passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the Lord.” Thus, the evening at the end of the fourteenth marks the start of the fifteenth.
The same pattern appears in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, the true Passover Lamb. Luke records, “That day was the preparation, and the sabbath drew on” (Luke 23:54). The Sabbath was approaching as the sun went down, not as the morning came. Mark adds, “And now when the even was come, because it was the preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath” (Mark 15:42). After Jesus was buried before sunset, the women “rested the sabbath day according to the commandment” (Luke 23:56). When they came to the tomb “in the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week” (Matthew 28:1), the Sabbath had already ended. The “dawning toward” refers to the growing light of a day that had begun hours earlier, at sunset. Every Gospel writer measures days by that same evening transition. John’s record agrees, for he states, “The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day (for that sabbath day was an high day), besought Pilate that their legs might be broken” (John 19:31). They hurried before the sun set, showing that the day’s change occurred at evening, not morning.
From Genesis through the Gospels, the evidence is unbroken: darkness and evening first, then morning and light. God’s order of time is sunset to sunset. “Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth. The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens. Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening” (Psalm 104:20–23). Light comes out of darkness; rest precedes labor; the divine initiative comes before human effort.
History confirms the shift away from this biblical pattern. In the ancient Near East, many Semitic peoples, including Israel, reckoned days from sunset. After the Babylonian exile and during later Greco-Roman rule, civic calendars moved to midnight or morning for administrative convenience. The Romans counted the civil day from midnight. By Constantine’s time in the fourth century, the midnight-to-midnight day was standard for civil law, and church custom followed suit. Yet even in the first century, both Josephus and the New Testament still reflect the sunset boundary (see Nehemiah 13:19; Mark 1:32).
Scripture never records a divine change. Whenever a law, a feast, or a holy observance is timed, it revolves around the setting of the sun. “When the sun is down, he shall be clean, and shall afterward eat of the holy things” (Leviticus 22:7). “At the going down of the sun thou shalt eat bread” (Deuteronomy 16:6). The midnight or morning reckonings are human accommodations, not divine decree.
The biblical order remains clear and profoundly symbolic. God begins His days in the stillness of evening, calling light out of darkness, rest before labor, grace before works. From creation to Calvary, and from Sabbath to the Second Coming, the rhythm of redemption beats to that same divine cadence: “And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1:5).
