Next as to the seven days. Now it is generally assumed, doubtless from their being referred to in the Fourth Commandment, that the writer intended these _days_ to be ordinary days of twenty-four hours each, but this is at least doubtful. For ordinary days depend on the _sun_, and would therefore have been impossible before the formation of the sun on the _fourth_ day; as the writer himself implies, when he says that the division of time into days and years was due to the sun. Then there is the difficulty as to the _seventh_ day, when God rested from all His work. This, it will be remembered had no close, or _evening_, and it is implied that it has continued ever since. For if God only rested for twenty-four hours, and then set to work again it would not have been a rest from _all_ His work. But in this case, the seventh day would represent a long period of time, and if so the other days would probably do the same. Moreover the writer, or compiler, of this very narrative, after describing the creation in six days, says it all occurred in _one_ day,[10] so he could scarcely have thought the days to be literal. [Footnote 10: Gen. 2. 4.] There are thus great difficulties from the narrative itself in taking the word _day_ in its ordinary sense; and it seems better to consider it (like so many terms in the Bible) as a human analogy applied to God. Then God's _days_ must be understood in the same way as God's _eyes_ or God's _hands_; and this removes all difficulties. None of these terms are of course literally true, but they represent the truth _to man_ in such a way that he can to some extent understand it. For example, the phrase that God gained the victory _by His own right hand_ clearly means that He gained it not with the assistance of others, or with the help of weapons, but simply by His own unaided inherent strength. It was such a victory as might _in a man_ be described as gained by his own right hand. And the same may be said of the passage, _The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and His ears are open unto their prayers_, and many others which occur in the Bible. The terms hands, eyes, and ears, when applied to God, are thus human analogies, which must not be taken literally. And in one passage at least the word _day_ is used in a similar sense; for we read "Hast thou eyes of flesh or seest thou as man seeth? Are thy days as the days of man, or thy years as man's days?"[11] Here it will be noticed _days_ and _years_ are applied to God in precisely the same manner as _eyes_ and _seeing_. [Footnote 11: Job 10. 4, 5.]