They are little colloquial expressions that to someone not familiar with the language would be confused as to its meaning.įor instance, in English a boss may warn an employee to stay on his toes. One area in my studies that I found fascinating was in the use of idioms. My thesis was on the Esoteric Structure of the Hebrew Alphabet which means I focused on ancient languages. My PhD is in Biblical Archaeology which means I studied Middle Eastern ancient history. Let me throw a third possibility into this mix. Some say the light was Jesus but then how can there be day and night unless God divided his creation into light Jesus and darkness without Jesus. It is one those mysteries, I guess, maybe not. It can’t be a luminary because the stars, sun and moon were not created until the fourth day, yet he divided this light into day and night and gave it a sense of time, one day. God is really saying “My desire is for light.” Or “I wish for light.” In plain English the best we can do is say: “Let there be light” that is if we are talking about Jesus as the light or a luminary. A Jussive shows a desire or wish, not a command as our English translations imply. So, “Let the be light” grammatically is a Qal imperfect infliction in a Jussive form. Genesis 1:3: “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”Īnd God said “ Yehi ohr ” “Let there be light.” Grammatical this is an antiptosis which is a rhetorical device in which one grammatical case is substituted for another for the purpose of showing an emphasis.

Let there be light am johnson