The Art of Foreshadowing: Weird Things in Genesis 1

In Genesis chapter 1, we encounter some rather weird things. Along the way, we get to see the art of literary foreshadowing. There are two odd details in particular: one big weird thing, and one little weird thing.

The first weird thing is this main character creating in six days. What is weird about that? Well, God wants to show his power. He creates the whole universe, the heavens and the earth, so he is extraordinarily powerful. If you are going to show off that kind of power, why would you do something as slow as creating in not one, not two, but six days? Why wouldn’t you create everything in a second, or a millisecond? That seems strange.

The second weird thing is a little bit smaller, but it is nevertheless still strange: the days are backwards. Notice that six times in Genesis 1 it says, “And there was evening and there was morning, the first day,” “there was evening and there was morning, the second day,” and so on. When we think about days, we think you wake up in the morning, you go through your day, and nighttime marks the end of the day. A day runs from morning until night. Later in the Bible we see that pattern as well. So why do we have it backwards here? Why do the days go from night to day?

The Aesthetic of the Unresolved Detail

Before we can understand these strange details, we have to look at one of my favorite literary and aesthetic techniques. I do not have a formal name for it, but it goes something like this: you encounter a particular detail—a character, an image, or a scene—that seems out of place and simply does not fit. You examine it from every angle, you think about it, and you just cannot figure it out.

No matter how much close attention you give to that single element, you cannot understand it just by looking at that piece in isolation. It only becomes intelligible, beautiful, and amazing when you pull back and see how it fits into the larger design. This dynamic occurs in paintings, whether in a tiny corner or a single figure; it works in film scenes; and it happens in music as well. If you isolate two harsh, clashing notes, they sound ugly on their own. But when those exact same notes are placed into a much larger, beautiful harmonic progression, you might not even notice the friction because of how well they function in context.

So what is the bigger, more beautiful picture where these weird details in Genesis 1 fit and make sense?

The Pattern of Work and Rest

Take the first detail: God creating slowly across six days. Remember what is going on at the very start. In the beginning, things are dark, shapeless, and empty. On day one, God makes it a little better. The text says it is tov, which is the Hebrew word that can mean good, or beautiful, or both. It is good and beautiful, but apparently it is not finished yet. On the next day, God takes hold of the world, separates it, and makes it better—though not fully good yet. He continues to work with it, laboring day after day, until on the sixth day, after six days of work, he can say it is very good and very beautiful. Only then does he rest.

What is the big picture that makes sense of this deliberate pace? This rhythm of God—working through six stages of labor and then entering into rest—is a foreshadowing of the entire biblical narrative. That is precisely what our main character does throughout the whole story of scripture. He is going to work, work, work, and at the very end, rest.

It goes deeper than that. God works, and then on the sixth day he hands over his work to human beings. But the problem is that their work is not like his work. Not only is it less powerful and less magnificent, but human beings fail at their task. Adam fails in the garden. God then provides another garden-like space—the land of Israel—to his people, giving them laws within it, and they fail as well.

When we reach the fifth and final act of this great drama in the New Testament, God comes in person in Jesus Christ. Jesus takes up the work. God has been working the entire time—slowly, episodically, day after day and year after year—and now Jesus comes to complete this great labor in an astonishing, powerful way so that it is finally very good. On the cross, he declares, “It is finished.”

It is fascinating that in John chapter 5, Jesus says, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” He is not speaking merely of ordinary, mundane labor; he is referring to this grand, macro-narrative work established in Genesis 1. Jesus comes to perform the work that the Father has been doing from the beginning.

In another passage in the Gospels, Jesus says:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Notice that work language: you have been laboring, you are weary, and he offers rest. Notice how deliberate he is with his vocabulary. He could have chosen many concepts—he could have promised forgiveness, or offered joy—but like a master artist, he selects the word rest. He is not talking merely about an afternoon nap or physical downtime. He is invoking the Genesis 1 rest: the completion of that overarching narrative where God labors through history and ultimately brings his people into his rest. That is the art of foreshadowing.

From Darkness to Perpetual Day

What about our second, smaller oddity—the days that run from evening to morning? The narrator is very deliberate in tracking this movement: darkness then light, evening then morning, night turning into day. Once again, this constitutes an overture picturing the entire movement of scripture.

Throughout the prophets and the New Testament writings, when the biblical authors look toward the culmination of history, they repeatedly describe that time as a “day.” They call it the “Day of the Lord.” Notice that they never call it the night of the Lord. It is fundamentally daytime and light at the end of history. We begin in darkness—literally in the opening hours of Genesis—and God moves the entire cosmos steadily toward the light.

This movement holds an even deeper resonance when you consider how we experience the passage from night to day. How do you get transported into the morning? If your day begins at night, how do you arrive at daytime? You lie down in the dark, you go to sleep, and when you wake up, it is day. The transition from night to morning, from darkness to light, happens through sleeping and waking.

In the imagery of the Bible, falling asleep and waking up are the primary pictures of dying and rising. In the New Testament, this transition is fulfilled in the story of Jesus. When we reach the final vision of scripture in the book of Revelation, describing the new heavens and the new earth, it is not merely a reset back to the garden. The text tells us that in this city there will be perpetual day; there will be no night and no darkness at all. Light serves as the controlling biblical image for moral perfection and absolute goodness.

We are also told that Jesus is the firstborn and the beginning of this new creation. How do we enter into that world of perpetual day? Through resurrection—by waking up. Sleep and death, waking and resurrection, are parallel images across scripture. From the very opening chapter of Genesis, this backwards sequence of evening and morning serves as an overture to the macro-narrative of redemption. And that is the art of foreshadowing.

Watch the original episode.