What Is a Day According to Yahuah? — When Does It Start and When Does It End?
Part 1
6th-day, Month 11, 3rd
Friday, January 23rd, 2026
Shalom to my brothers and sisters who walk in the set-apart way with Yahusha Ha’Mashiach and guard covenant with Father Yahuah and love Him through obedience to His commandments.
Introduction
In this series we have looked at what a year is, what a month is and what a week is according to what the scriptures say and not what man, woman or anything else says, and now we are going to apply this to what the scriptures say about a day.
Before we begin, I will state what I believe from what the scriptures say and what Ruach Elohiym has revealed to me. When I first came into truth, the understanding that the whole Bible, Old and New Testaments, still applied to believers today, I went along with the mainstream idea that a biblical day started at sunset, the evening part of the day. As I began to sturdy Yahuah’s Moediym, it began to become a little problematic that the day began at sundown, and the more I studied, the more it was revealed to me that the day begins with the appearance of the light.
Of course there are two different definitions of a day, the time period that the light can be seen and then the time of the complete cycle of ± twenty four hours, which includes the two evens and the night
**It is my belief that the order of the day goes as follows:
The twenty four hour day begins when the light of the sun breaks the horizon and is first seen, then the day proceeds to the first even part of the day, the time when there is not direct light nor direct darkness – what is generally called the evening, then it proceeds to night time when there is no light from the sun, which then proceeds to the second even of the day, which is generally called morning and the new day begins when the light of the sun breaks the horizon.
What the Scriptures Say in the Beginning
The Bere’shiyth Account:
From the beginning, the definition of a day was set, both the “daylight day” and the “twenty four hour day” (there is no actual time amount given for this complete day), and we can see this in the third, fourth and fifth verses of the first chapter of the scriptures:
Bere’shiyth (Genesis) 1:3-5 – “And Elohiym said, Let there be light: and there was light. And Elohiym saw the light, that it was good: and Elohiym divided the light from the darkness. And Elohiym called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.”
**The light was called day, and therefore the daylight part of the twenty four hour period was called “day” and the darkness was called night. Even though the darkness was called night and separated from the day, it was still considered part of the “twenty four hour day” that came after the “day” of daylight. The sequence was set in these three verses, Elohiym said let there be light and the day began (both the daylight day and the twenty four hour day) He separated the light from the darkness and called the darkness night, which followed the day and the two evens completed the twenty four hour day with the evening separating the day from the night and the morning separating the night from the new day about to begin when the light returned again.
I pray this just clicked and the ahh hah light bulb just went off. If not, don’t worry about it, I pray that it will happen the further we get into it.
The next five days follow this simple sequence of events, and notice that none of them start with darkness beginning the next day, the day always begins with “And Elohiym said..” with the time between the evening and the morning accounting for the night at the end:
Bere’shiyth (Genesis) 1:6-8 – “And Elohiym said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And Elohiym made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And Elohiym called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.”
**The beginning verses of the next five days show that the day begins with something being created, because work is done during the daylight, followed by other work/creation being done by Elohiym and the day ending with the evening transitioning to night which transitions to morning and the cycle repeats when the light breaks the horizon. The night is not mentioned as it is accounted for between the evening and the morning.
Many see the last phrase of all six days “And the evening and the morning were the second day.” as proof that the day starts with the evening going through to the morning thus defining the day starting in the evening, but is this how we are to read it?
First, this statement is at the end of the days events signifying the completion of the day. If the evening truly were the start of the day, shouldn’t each day begin with “The evening and the morning were the second day and Elohiym created….”?
Another argument for the day starting at evening is the account in the first two verses of Bere’shiyth chapter one where there was darkness before the light, and this is true, so then the day starts at evening Pat. This is incorrect because you have to have a light source to have an even, morning or evening, so where did the light come from that made either of the evens? If the thought is that darkness was before light then the day would start at night, when there is no light, not at evening when the light is still there just before it leaves and the darkness makes night.
Before we get into the definition of what a day is, let’s take a close look at the Hebrew for this clause that is at the end of the first six days:
Bere’shiyth (Genesis) 1:5 – “And Elohiym called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.“
**Verse five of chapter one gives the full sequence (in order) of a day from the beginning to the end;
וַיִּקְרָ֨א (And called)אֱלֹהִ֤ים (Elohiym) לָאוֹר֙ (the light) י֔וֹם (day)וְלַחֹ֖שֶׁךְ (and the darkness)קָ֣רָא (called He) לָ֑יְלָה (night); וַֽיְהִי־ (and there was) עֶ֥רֶב (evening) וַֽיְהִי־ (and there was) בֹ֖קֶר (morning) ､(,)י֥וֹם (day) אֶחָֽד (one).
We can see from the Hebrew that the evening and the morning happened after the day’s work of creating light and separating it from the darkness, that the evening and morning were for this purpose of separating the day from the night and the night back to the day, completing the cycle of the twenty four hour day. We will look at the word/phrase “וַֽיְהִי־ (and there was)” in the definitions section which will give us a better understanding.
This arrangement, “And the evening and the morning were the first day,” is the pattern for the next five days, after the work of the day is done then there is evening leading to night, to close the daylight day out, and then morning, to close the night out, leading to the approaching new day:
Bere’shiyth (Genesis) 1:8b – “And the evening and the morning were the second day.“
Bere’shiyth (Genesis) 1:13 – “And the evening and the morning were the third day.“
Bere’shiyth (Genesis) 1:19 – “And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.“
Bere’shiyth (Genesis) 1:23 – “And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.“
Bere’shiyth (Genesis) 1:31b – “And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.“
This statement closes out each day after the work of Elohiym had been performed. If the evening were the beginning of the day, it would seem more logical to place this statement at the beginning of each day instead of using it to close it out each day and the grammar would be different.
Definitions Surrounding a Day
The main word used for day in the Hebrew is יוֹם (yom) and it is SHW 3117 which is from an unused root meaning to be hot; a day (as the warm hours), whether literally (from sunrise to sunset, or from one sunset to the next {AKA “the twenty four hour day”}) or figuratively (a space of time defined by an associated term), [often used adverbially] – day (2008x), time (64x), chronicles + 1697 (37x), daily (32x), ever (17x), year (14x), continually (10x), as (10x), full (8x), always (4x), whole (4x), alway (4x), miscellaneous (44x).
Yowm (3117) “daylight; day; time; moment; year.”
1. Yowm has several meanings.
1a. The word represents the period of “daylight” as contrasted with nighttime: Bere’shiyth 8:22.
1b. The word denotes a period of twenty-four hours: Bere’shiyth 39:10.
**There are a total of ten definitions in The New Strong’s Expanded Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible but they all have to do with other constructs of yom for the other 266 times it is used not specifically as day.
As we can see from the first part of the definition, yom means to be hot as in the warm hours of the day from sunrise to sunset. This is significant in that it lets us know that this is what defines a day. The next part is added, in my belief, by the enemy to confuse us and have us on his time keeping changing light for darkness. To have the day start at sunset, when the heat is fading away would be like saying the night starts in the morning and having the everything warm up before and go through the day just to get to the night?? Does this really make sense?
The next word that means day sometimes is אוֹר (owr) which is from SHW 215; illumination or (concretely) luminary (in every sense, including lightning, happiness, etc.): – bright(1x), clear (1x), +day (2x), light(s) (114x) (ning), morning (1x), sun (1x).
Owr (216), the noun, means “light.”
1. The first occurrence of owr is in the creation account Bere’shiyth 1:3. Here light is the opposite of “darkness.”
2. The opposition of “light” and “darkness” is not a unique phenomenon.
4. The basic meaning of owr is “daylight” Bere’shiyth 1:3.
**Owr or light, is the opposite of darkness which is called night.
Why would the beautiful light of the day be started by the removal of the light for the transition to start the night in the evening and have the darkness come before the daylight?
SHW 1242 בֹּקֶר (boqer) is from SHW 1239; properly dawn (as the break of day); generally morning: – morning (190x), morrow (7x) day (3x), days + 6153 (1x) early (3x).
Boqer (1242) means “morning.”
1. This word means “morning”
1a. Though not the period of time before noon
1b. Rather it indicates the point of time at which night is changing to day or that time at the end of night: Shemoth 10:13.
2. Boqer can represent the time just before the rising of the sun. Shofetiym 19:25.
3. In the ancient Near East the night was divided into three watches.
3a. The last period of the night was called the morning watch (Shemoth 14:24)
3b. It lasted from 2:00 A.M. until sunrise, and in such a context the word indicates this period of time.
4. Boqer can mean “daybreak” or “dawn” Shemoth 14:27.
5. Boqer is used as a synonym of “dawn” in Iyov 38:12 “Hast thou commanded the boqer (morning) since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place…?”-
**Boqer is the word for morning that doesn’t mean what we are lead to believe it is in our culture as the time of the day before noon. Boqer is the time of the twenty four hour day when the even changes night to day, or the time before the break of day and that is why it is the last thing in the creation of the first through the sixth days.
SHW 4283 מָחֱרָת (macharath or macharatham) from the same as 4279; the morrow or (adverb) tomorrow: – morrow (29x), next day (2x), next (1x).
Macharath, as an adverb, means “the next day.”
1. Closely related to the noun machar (4279) is the adverb, which occurs about 32 times and in all periods of biblical Hebrew.
2. About 28 times macharat is joined to the preposition “to mean on the next day.” This is its form and meaning in its firs biblical appearance Bere’shiyth 19:34.
4. In Bemidbar 11:32 macharath appears after yom, “day,” and is preceded by the definite article.
**The morrow (macharath) is defined as the next day after the night of the previous day, it is not defined as the next day after its own night and this is made crystal clear in:
Bemidbar (Numbers) 33:3 – “And they departed from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month; on the morrow after the Pesach the children of Yashar’el went out with an high hand in the sight of all the Mitsriym.”
**This verse shows that the evening of the Pesach, it’s night and morning were all on the fourteenth day of the first month and the fifteenth day was on the morrow, next day, after the Pesach.
SHW 7837 is the last word we will look at that can mean day and it is שַׁחַר (shachar) which is from 7836; dawn (literally, figuratively or adverbially): – morning (12x), day (6x), early (2x), dayspring (1x), light (1x), riseth (1x), Shahar (1x).
**Shachar means the time at the start of the day, when the light appears in the morning, after the night when the day is springing forth anew and is shown in:
Bere’shiyth (Genesis) 32:24 & 26 – “And Ya’aqov was left alone; and there wrestled a Man with him until the breaking of the day.“
**Ya’aqov wrestled with the Man until the breaking or start of the day. No where in scripture does it say “when the day began in the evening” or any similar language. The scriptures consistently point the the day starting at sunrise.
The las definition we will look at does not have to do with the word day but it is SHW 1961 which is הָיָה (hayah) an it is from the scriptures found for the close of all six days “and the evening and the morning were the ____ day.”
SHW 1961 is a primitive root [comparative to 1933]; to exist, i.e. be or become, come to pass (always emphatically , and not a mere copula or auxiliary): Haya means “to become, occur, come to pass, be.”
**If we substitute the above definitions of hayah in the text it reads a little differently than just using “and the” as we can see from the translation we used in the beginning from The Interlinear Bible, 1 volume edition copyright 1984:
“וַֽיְהִי־ (and there was) עֶ֥רֶב (evening) וַֽיְהִי־ (and there was) בֹ֖קֶר (morning) ､(,)י֥וֹם (day) אֶחָֽד (one).”
“And there was evening and there was morning” lets us know that this is the continuation after the day and the night is understood to be in between the evening and morning.
If we take it a step further with the hayah definition:
“And came to pass the evening and came to pass the morning” makes it even more clear that this is following the creation events of that day and not going back to define the start of the day.
One more step is:
“And then occurred the evening and then occurred the morning.”
**From the above definitions we can see that day is defined by the breaking of the light, when work can start to be done and then the night comes, after the evening transition, to rest from the days work and the new day breaks forth after the morning transition from night rest back to the light of day for more work to be done.
Even without interpreting hayah into anything else except “and the evening and the morning were the ____ day” the structure of the text tells us that this is an add on to the original day and not the start or definition of a day.
Conclusion
The day is important to Yahuah Elohiym and how we guard it is important also.
I hope this has helped clarify the definition and meaning of a day for you and the ahh hah moment has come. If not, we still have at least one more part to the day and that will be all of the actual scriptures that show the natural order of light (work) and then darkness (rest from the days work) to explore.
Next week we will look at the scriptures surrounding a day and how this affects each and every Shabbath of Yahuah’s.
I pray that you all have a blessed 6th-day and remember that Yahuah’s Shabbath Feast Day of Rest is tomorrow!
Shalom,
Minister Morrow
