Genesis 1:19

Summary

Closing formula of the fourth day: two identical narrative verbs mark the sequence "and there was evening and there was morning", and an ordinal number counts the day. The same structure reappears at the close of the fifth day (v. 23).

Key words

• y.hi ("there was", H1961) — qal narrative verb, twice: "and there was… and there was…".
• 'E.rev ("evening", H6153) — masculine singular noun.
• Vo.ker ("morning", H1242) — masculine singular noun.
• Yom ("a day", H3117) — noun without the article.
• re.vi.'I ("fourth", H7243) — ordinal number.

What the text says

The verse consists of two twin narrative clauses and a final apposition. The verb y.hi ("there was", H1961) appears twice in the narrative form — the construction the provided morphology glosses "and then…" — first with 'E.rev ("evening", H6153) and then with Vo.ker ("morning", H1242). The order is fixed: evening first, then morning; all four provided versions preserve it (LXX ἑσπέρα… πρωί; Vulgate "vespere et mane"; RV1909 "la tarde y la mañana"; BSB "evening… morning").

The count arrives with Yom ("a day", H3117) plus the ordinal re.vi.'I ("fourth", H7243), a masculine singular ordinal number. The English gloss provided for Yom here is "a day": the Hebrew phrase carries no definite article — "a fourth day". After the verse ends, the provided Hebrew text (TAHOT) shows the isolated letter פ, a visible division mark in the text.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew phrase lacks the article, and the LXX matches it without one (ἡμέρα τετάρτη); the RV1909, by contrast, translates "el día cuarto" and the BSB "the fourth day", both with the definite article. The Hebrew, the LXX, and the BSB repeat the verb ("and there was… and there was…"; ἐγένετο… ἐγένετο), but the Vulgate writes it once ("Et factum est vespere et mane") and the RV1909 also unifies it ("Y fué la tarde y la mañana"). The provided BSB text additionally appends the section heading "The Fifth Day" after the verse, which corresponds to no words in the Hebrew.