Genesis 1:16
New International Version
God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.

New Living Translation
God made two great lights—the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars.

English Standard Version
And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.

Berean Standard Bible
God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. And He made the stars as well.

King James Bible
And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

New King James Version
Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also.

New American Standard Bible
God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also.

NASB 1995
God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also.

NASB 1977
And God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also.

Legacy Standard Bible
So God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, and also the stars.

Amplified Bible
God made the two great lights—the greater light (the sun) to rule the day, and the lesser light (the moon) to rule the night; He made the [galaxies of] stars also [that is, all the amazing wonders in the heavens].

Christian Standard Bible
God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule over the day and the lesser light to rule over the night—as well as the stars.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
God made the two great lights—the greater light to have dominion over the day and the lesser light to have dominion over the night—as well as the stars.

American Standard Version
And God made the two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

Aramaic Bible in Plain English
And God made two great lights: a great light for a ruler of daytime, and one little light for a ruler of the night, and the stars.

Brenton Septuagint Translation
And God made the two great lights, the greater light for regulating the day and the lesser light for regulating the night, the stars also.

Contemporary English Version
God made two powerful lights, the brighter one to rule the day and the other to rule the night. He also made the stars.

Douay-Rheims Bible
And God made two great lights: a greater light to rule the day; and a lesser light to rule the night: and the stars.

English Revised Version
And God made the two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

GOD'S WORD® Translation
God made the two bright lights: the larger light to rule the day and the smaller light to rule the night. He also made the stars.

Good News Translation
So God made the two larger lights, the sun to rule over the day and the moon to rule over the night; he also made the stars.

International Standard Version
God fashioned two great lights—the larger light to shine during the day and the smaller light to shine during the night—as well as stars.

JPS Tanakh 1917
And God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; and the stars.

Literal Standard Version
And God makes the two great luminaries, the great luminary for the rule of the day, and the small luminary—and the stars—for the rule of the night;

Majority Standard Bible
God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. And He made the stars as well.

New American Bible
God made the two great lights, the greater one to govern the day, and the lesser one to govern the night, and the stars.

NET Bible
God made two great lights--the greater light to rule over the day and the lesser light to rule over the night. He made the stars also.

New Revised Standard Version
God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.

New Heart English Bible
And God made the two great lights--the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night--and the stars.

Webster's Bible Translation
And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

World English Bible
God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He also made the stars.

Young's Literal Translation
And God maketh the two great luminaries, the great luminary for the rule of the day, and the small luminary -- and the stars -- for the rule of the night;

Additional Translations ...
Audio Bible



Context
The Fourth Day
15And let them serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth.” And it was so. 16God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. And He made the stars as well. 17God set these lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth,…

Cross References
Genesis 1:15
And let them serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth." And it was so.

Job 38:7
while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Psalm 8:3
When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place--

Psalm 136:8
the sun to rule the day, His loving devotion endures forever.

Psalm 136:9
the moon and stars to govern the night. His loving devotion endures forever.

Isaiah 40:26
Lift up your eyes on high: Who created all these? He leads forth the starry host by number; He calls each one by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.


Treasury of Scripture

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

to rule.

Deuteronomy 4:19
And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.

Joshua 10:12-14
Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon…

Job 31:26
If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness;

he made the stars also.

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Genesis 1
1. God creates heaven and earth;
3. the light;
6. the firmament;
9. separates the dry land;
14. forms the sun, moon, and stars;
20. fishes and fowls;
24. cattle, wild beasts, and creeping things;
26. creates man in his own image, blesses him;
29. grants the fruits of the earth for food.














(16) He made the stars also.--The Hebrew is, God made two great lights . . . to rule the night; and also the stars. Though the word "also" carries back "the stars" to the verb "made," yet its repetition in our version makes it seem as if the meaning was that God now created the stars; whereas the real sense is that the stars were to rule the night equally with the moon. But besides this, there was no place where the stars--by which the planets are chiefly meant--could be so well mentioned as here. Two of them, Venus and Mercury, were formed somewhere between the first and the fourth day; and absolutely it was not till this day that our solar system, consisting of a central sun and the planets, with their attendant satellites, was complete. To introduce the idea of the fixed stars is unreasonable, for it is the planets which, by becoming in their turns morning and evening stars, rule the night; though the fixed stars indicate the seasons of the year. The true meaning, then, is that at the end of the fourth day the distribution of land and water, the state of the atmosphere, the alternation of day and night, of seasons and years, and the astronomical relations of the sun, moon, and planets (with the stars) to the earth were all settled and fixed, much as they are at present. And to this geology bears witness. Existing causes amply suffice to account for all changes that have taken place on our globe since the day when animal life first appeared upon the earth.

Verse 16. - And God made two great lights. Perhaps no part of the material universe more irresistibly demands a supreme Intelligence as its only proper origin and cause. "Elegantissima haecce solis, planetarum et cometarum compages non nisi consilio et domino entis intelligentis et potentis oriri potuit" (Newton, 'Principia,' lib. 3. sub fin. Ed. of Le Seur and Jacquier, vol. 2. p. 199). The greater light to rule (literally, to make like; hence to judge; then to rule. Mashal; cf. βασιλεύω ( Γεσενινσ<ΒΤΤ·Ξομμενταρψ Ωορδ>) the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. The greater light is obviously the sun, which is sometimes denominated chammah, "the warm" (Psalm 19:7; Isaiah 30:26); sometimes there, "the glistering" (Job 9:7); but usually shemesh, "the minister (Deuteronomy 4:19; Deuteronomy 33:14). Here it is described by its bulk or magnitude, which is larger than that of the moon, the second of the two luminaries, which is also spoken of as great relatively to the stars, which, though in reality immensely exceeding it in size, yet appear like little bails of light (kokhavim) bestudding the blue canopy of night, and are so depicted - the Biblical narrative being geocentric and phenomenal, not heliocentric or scientific. How the work of this day was effected does not fall within the writer's scope to declare, the precise object of revelation being to teach not astronomy, or any other merely human gnosis, but religion. Accepting, however, the guidance of physical astronomy, we may imagine that the cosmical light of day one, which had up to this point continued either encompassing our globe like a luminous atmosphere, or existing at a distance from it, but in the plane of the earth's orbit, was now, if in the first of these positions, gradually broken up, doubtless through the shrinking of the earth's mass and the consequent lessening of its power Of attraction, and slowly drawn off towards, and finally concentrated, as a photosphere round the sun, which was thereby constituted chief luminary or "light-holder" the system, the moon and planets becoming, as a necessary consequence, "light-holders" in the secondary sense of "light-reflectors." It is interesting to note that some such explanation as this appears to have suggested itself to Willet, who wrote before the birth of Newton, and at a time when solar physics and spectrum analysis were things of the remote future. It m not unlike, says he, "but that this light (of the first day), after the creation of the celestial bodies, might be drawn upward and have his reflection upon the beame of the sunne and of other starres" And again, "Whereas the light created the first day is called or, but the starres (meaning the heavenly bodies) are called meoroth, as of the light, hence it may appear that these lightsome (i.e. luminous) bodies were made the receptacles of that light thou created, which was now increased and united to these lights" ('Hexapla,' vers. 3, 14, London, 1632); an explanation which, though certainly hypothetical, must be regarded as much more in accordance with the requirements of the sacred text than that which discovers in the making of the lights only a further dissipation of terrestrial mists so as to admit not the light-bringing beams of the celestial bodies alone, but the forms of those shining orbs themselves ('Speaker's Commentary'). He made the stars also. Though the stars are introduced solely because of their relation to the earth as dispensers of light, and no account is taken of their constitution as suns and planets, it is admissible to entertain the opinion that, in their case, as in that of the chief luminary of our tellurian heavens, the process of "sun" making reached its culmination on the fourth day. Perhaps the chief reason for their parenthetical introduction in this place was to guard against the notion that there were any luminaries which were not the work of Elohim, and in particular to prevent the Hebrews, for whom the work was written, from yielding to the heathen practices of star-gazing and star-worship. "The superstition of reading the destiny of man in the stars never took root among the Israelites; astrology is excluded by the first principle of Mosaism - the belief in one all-ruling God, who is subject to no necessity, no fate, no other will. Jeremiah warns the Hebrews not to be afraid of the 'signs of heaven,' before which the heathen tremble in vain terror (Jeremiah 10:2); and Isaiah speaks with taunting irony against the astrologers, star-gazers, and monthly prognosticators, in whose counsel it is folly and wickedness to rely (Isaiah 47:13). But the Israelites had not moral strength enough to resist the example of star-worship in general; they could not keep aloof from an aberration which formed the very focus of the principal Eastern religions; they yielded to that tempting influence, and ignominious incense rose profusely in honor of the sun and the hosts of heaven - Jeremiah 19:13; Ezekiel 8:16; Zephaniah 1:5; Wisd. 13:2" (Kalisch).

Parallel Commentaries ...


Hebrew
God
אֱלֹהִ֔ים (’ĕ·lō·hîm)
Noun - masculine plural
Strong's 430: gods -- the supreme God, magistrates, a superlative

made
וַיַּ֣עַשׂ (way·ya·‘aś)
Conjunctive waw | Verb - Qal - Consecutive imperfect - third person masculine singular
Strong's 6213: To do, make

two
שְׁנֵ֥י (šə·nê)
Number - mdc
Strong's 8147: Two (a cardinal number)

great
הַגְּדֹלִ֑ים (hag·gə·ḏō·lîm)
Article | Adjective - masculine plural
Strong's 1419: Great, older, insolent

lights:
הַמְּאֹרֹ֖ת (ham·mə·’ō·rōṯ)
Article | Noun - masculine plural
Strong's 3974: A luminous body, luminary, light, brightness, cheerfulness, a chandelier

the greater
הַגָּדֹל֙ (hag·gā·ḏōl)
Article | Adjective - masculine singular
Strong's 1419: Great, older, insolent

light
הַמָּא֤וֹר (ham·mā·’ō·wr)
Article | Noun - masculine singular
Strong's 3974: A luminous body, luminary, light, brightness, cheerfulness, a chandelier

to rule
לְמֶמְשֶׁ֣לֶת (lə·mem·še·leṯ)
Preposition-l | Noun - feminine singular construct
Strong's 4475: Rule, a realm, a ruler

the day
הַיּ֔וֹם (hay·yō·wm)
Article | Noun - masculine singular
Strong's 3117: A day

and
וְאֶת־ (wə·’eṯ-)
Conjunctive waw | Direct object marker
Strong's 853: Untranslatable mark of the accusative case

the lesser
הַקָּטֹן֙ (haq·qā·ṭōn)
Article | Adjective - masculine singular
Strong's 6996: Small, young, unimportant

light
הַמָּא֤וֹר (ham·mā·’ō·wr)
Article | Noun - masculine singular
Strong's 3974: A luminous body, luminary, light, brightness, cheerfulness, a chandelier

to rule
לְמֶמְשֶׁ֣לֶת (lə·mem·še·leṯ)
Preposition-l | Noun - feminine singular construct
Strong's 4475: Rule, a realm, a ruler

the night.
הַלַּ֔יְלָה (hal·lay·lāh)
Article | Noun - masculine singular
Strong's 3915: A twist, night, adversity

And [He made]
וְאֵ֖ת (wə·’êṯ)
Conjunctive waw | Direct object marker
Strong's 853: Untranslatable mark of the accusative case

the stars {as well}.
הַכּוֹכָבִֽים׃ (hak·kō·w·ḵā·ḇîm)
Article | Noun - masculine plural
Strong's 3556: A star, a prince


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OT Law: Genesis 1:16 God made the two great lights: (Gen. Ge Gn)
Genesis 1:15
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