Why does the Hebrew day start at sunset?

At first glance, this seems counterintuitive: the day happens during sunlight, so why start the day when sunlight ends?

However, it’s not that the Hebrew day starts at sunset but that it ends at sunset: the day ends when the sun goes. If a day ends at sunset, then the next one has to start at sunset.

If we were to define the start of the day at sunrise, for example, this would mean the end of the previous day was also be sunrise. Saying the day ends at sunrise is likewise weird. Yet this is just a consequence of cycles.

 

Different systems start the day at different times.

            For example, the international day starts at midnight. If noon is the middle of a continuous time of sunlight, then either side of it has to be the same day. This means that the opposite of noon (midnight) is the only remaining option for one day transitioning into the next.

            Within astronomy, the day begins at noon. This is so that their observations of a single night are recorded as happening on the same date. Otherwise astronomers would have to split each date into two halves (for the night at the start of the date and the night at the end of the date) which would be too cumbersome.

Judaism isn’t the only religion to start the day at sunset. This trait is also found in Paganism: they begin their celebrations for a specific date on the sunset before. Considering that Pagan events are determined by the lunar cycle, it makes sense for a single night to be part of the same day. So Pagans share the same date-start as Hebrews yet for the same reason as astronomers.

 

With many systems choosing different points to start the day, why did Hebrews choose sunset?

The justification is in Genesis 1:5 which says: ‘There was evening and there was morning, the first day.’ That is, the first day consisted of the evening and then the morning. Before Genesis 1:5, it says God separated night from day.

If God separated light from darkness, and then it was evening, and evening is the start of the day, then that evening was the start of the first day. Does that mean God separating light from darkness didn’t happen during a day? Or maybe evening is the separation of light hours from dark hours so a day would start at that cusp?

But the way Genesis is written, with what God does and then saying ‘there was evening and then morning, the first/second day’, it reads like the event happens on that named day. Indeed, when it says the sixth day, no event follows it other than God resting on the seventh day. So unless nothing happened on the sixth day, the established interpretation isn’t accurate.

 

 

I didn’t expect so much detail to come from the question.

Considering its cyclical nature, there’s no wonder that days start at different points for different reasons. Even the term ‘day’ is ambiguous, being used to mean daytime and also for both daytime and nighttime together. Hence choosing when a day starts will always be a subjective perspective rather than an objective fact. Such a simple question for a revealing answer!

So why does the Hebrew day (sunlight) start at sunset? The basic answer is that it starts at sunset because the previous day ended at sunset. The Biblical answer is that the first day started at sunset. Considering that reading the Bible doesn’t give this impression, I’d go with the basic answer.