In the second chapter of Genesis, Moses, having completed his account of the Creation, says (v. 4): “These are the generations of the Heavens and the Earth when they were created, in the _Day_ יוֺם, (_yom_) that the Lord God created the Earth and the Heavens: (v. 5), and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew.” There is a good deal of controversy about the precise meaning of this passage. But one thing at least appears to be plain, that the word יוֺם (_yom_), is not used to designate a day of twenty-four hours; nor yet the period of light from sunrise to sunset; but rather the whole period of the Creation. On this point almost all our best commentators are agreed. “It is manifest,” says Venerable Bede, “that in this place the sacred writer has put the word Day for all that time during which the primeval creation was brought into existence. For it was not upon any one of the Six Days that the sky was made and adorned with stars, and the dry land was separated from the waters, and furnished with trees and plants. But, _according to its accustomed practice_, Scripture here uses the word day in the sense of time.” Saint Augustine gives even a wider expansion to the word when he writes: “Seven Days are enumerated above, and now that is called one Day in which God made the Heavens and the Earth, and every green thing of the field; by which term we may well suppose that _all time is meant_. For God then made all time when He made creatures that live in time; and these creatures are here signified by the Heavens and the Earth.” Molina on the same passage says: “Learned writers tell us commonly that Moses in this place puts the word Day in the sense of Time, just as in the passage of Deuteronomy, ‘The day of perdition is at hand.’... And elsewhere in Scripture Day is often used for Time.” Bannez, too, concurs in this opinion. “The word Day,” he says, “can be understood _for any duration whatsoever_.” Perrerius, answering an objection taken from this text, says that “Day is put for Time, as is _frequently done in Scripture_.” And Petavius not only adopts this interpretation, but contends that it is conformable to the usage even of the Greek and Latin writers. He gives an example from Cicero against Verres: “Itaque cum ego _diem_ in Siciliam perexiguam postulavissem, invenit iste qui sibi in Achaiam _biduo breviorem diem_ postularet.”[142] Here, then, is an instance in which Moses himself uses the word Day (יוֺם, _yom_) not in the ordinary sense, but for a long period of time;--for all that time, whatever it may have been, which elapsed from the first act of creation to the close of the Six Days.