When does the day begin?

Honestly, I believe it begins at sunup. You don’t have to believe that, but here is my case.

We will start in Genesis One.

[Genesis 1:1-2 NKJV] 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

This is simply telling us what He did.

[Genesis 1:3 NKJV] 3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

The “then” is not there in Hebrew. Broken down it says, “God said let there be light, and light was”. Since Genesis 1:1-2 is just a preamble telling us what He did, light is where creation actually began.

[Genesis 1:5 NKJV] 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.

This should be another clue as to when the day begins; God puts day first and day is light.

An additional clue should be in the second sentence of Genesis 1:5; “So the evening and the morning were the first day.” In the KJV the “so” is “and”. So or and the evening implies something preceded it and we call that day.

Then we have the Hebrew word for morning; boqer. It actually means the breaking forth of light or the time just before light breaks forth.

So, I think I have made my case that we have day or from sunrise to sunset; evening; and then morning or the time just before the break of day.

At the end of each period of work done by God we have, “So the evening and the morning …”. This is a period of work during the daylight hours and then the close of the day into night.

All I am doing here is reading what the text says and letting His Holy Spirit guide me through it.

So, when did the Jews start setting the beginning of the day at sunset?

In his article, “The Day Begins with Night”, at JTSA.edu Ismar Schorsch, said:

The Mishna, Judaism's first legal compendium after the Bible, opens with a treatment of the proper times to recite the Shema in the evening and in the morning. The first line reads: "From when to when do we [liturgically] read the Shema in the evening." The ensuing discussion in the Gemara (Mishna + Gemara = Talmud) asks why the Mishna doesn't first take up the morning Shema. Since the day starts in the morning, wouldn't this be the logical place to start? The answer of the Gemara is brief and far-reaching. The Mishna follows the order of creation. Six times the opening chapter of the Torah repeats the poetic refrain, "And there was evening and there was morning," to signal the completion of a divine day's work. The Torah seems to be going out of its way to establish the fact that the day does not begin with the crack of dawn, but rather with the setting of the sun (or halakhicly, with the appearance of three stars).

And indeed, this has been the Jewish practice ever since.

So the practice was first cited in the Mishna by a Rabbi. The Mishna is an edited record of the complex body of material known as oral Torah that was transmitted in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. In other words, it is the word of man.

I have cited to you the word of God and the word of man that changed the word of God. I believe that that the word of God makes it very clear that the day begins at sunup.

[Leviticus 23:32 NKJV] 32 "It [shall be] to you a sabbath of [solemn] rest, and you shall afflict your souls; on the ninth [day] of the month at evening, from evening to evening, you shall celebrate your sabbath."

[Leviticus 23:5 NKJV] 5 'On the fourteenth [day] of the first month at twilight [is] the LORD's Passover.

[Nehemiah 13:19 NKJV] 19 So it was, at the gates of Jerusalem, as it began to be dark before the Sabbath, that I commanded the gates to be shut, and charged that they must not be opened till after the Sabbath. Then I posted [some] of my servants at the gates, [so that] no burdens would be brought in on the Sabbath day.

I have had people tell me that all of these verses confirm that the day begins in the evening.

Leviticus 23:32 is describing Atonement and it is an evening to evening event. Leviticus 23:5 is describing Passover and we are to consume the Passover between the evenings. All Nehemiah 13:19 is telling us is that they shut the gate the evening before the Sabbath and that was to ensure that none of the merchants entered to sell on the Sabbath.

There are other verses like these in the Bible and if you examine them in context, use some common sense, and let His Holy Spirit guide you then you will see that the day does begin when the sun rises.