Leupold Genesis part 35 verse 5 'yom' and 'period'

There ought to be no need of refuting the idea that yom means period. Reputable dictionaries like Buhl, B D B or K. W. know nothing of this notion. Hebrew dictionaries are our primary source of reliable information concerning Hebrew words. Commentators with critical leanings utter statements that are very decided in this instance. Says Skinner: "The interpretation of yom as aeon, a favourite resource of harmonists of science and revelation, is opposed to the plain sense of the passage and has no warrant in Hebrew usage." Dillmann remarks: "The reasons advanced by ancient and modern writers for construing these days to be longer periods of time are inadequate." There is one other meaning of the word "day" which some misapprehend by failing to think through its exact bearing: yom may mean "time" in a very general way, as in 2:4 beyom, or Isa. 11:16; cf. B D B, p. 399, No. 6, for. numerous illustrations. But that use-cannot substantiate so utterly different an idea as "period." These two conceptions lie far apart. References to expressions like "the day of the Lord" fail to invalidate our contentions above. For "the day of the Lord." as B D B rightly defines, p. 399, No. 3, is regarded "chiefly as the time of His coming in judgment, involving often blessedness for the righteous."

Other arguments to the contrary carry very little weight. If it be claimed that some works can with difficulty be compressed within twenty-four hours, like those of the third day or the sixth, that claim may well be described as a purely subjective opinion. He that desires to reason it out as possible can assemble fully as many arguments as he who holds the opposite opinion. Or if it be claimed that "the duration of the seventh day determines the rest," let it be noted that nothing is stated about the duration of the seventh. This happens to be an argument from silence, and therefore it is exceptionally weak. Or again, if it be claimed that "the argument of the fourth (our third) commandment confirms this probability," we find in this commandment even stronger confirmation of our contention: six twenty-four hour days followed by one such day of rest alone can furnish a proper analogy for our labouring six days and resting on the seventh day; periods furnish a poor analogy for days. Finally, the contention that our conception "contradicts geology" is inaccurate. It merely contradicts one school of thought in the field of geology, a school of thought of which we are convinced that it is hopelessly entangled in misconceptions which grow out of attempts to co-ordinate the actual findings of geology with an evolutionistic conception of what geology should be, and so is for the present thrown into a complete misreading of the available evidence, even as history, anthropology, Old Testament studies and many other sciences have been derailed and mired by the same attempt. We believe that writers on the subject like Price and Nelson deserve far more consideration than is being accorded them.