Having argued for his previous points about the temple and the cosmos, Walton’s “Proposition 9” is that the seven days in Genesis relate to the inauguration of the cosmic temple. It has long been hypothesized that the ancient Israelites may have had a New Year’s festival akin to other peoples in the ancient Near East, one that celebrated creation and temple, and Genesis 1 would have been an aptly suited text for use on such an occasion.
Walton emphasizes that, even though yom (Hebrew for “day”) can indeed be used in a more general sense, the days in Genesis 1 are explicitly said to be days in the more specific sense, ones that consist of “evening and morning” (p.91). In that context he writes, “Word meanings cannot be chosen as if we were in a cafeteria taking whatever we like” (pp.91-92). Having made this point, he emphasizes that the seven-day period is best understood as the period in which the cosmic temple is inaugurated, and perhaps the length of time in which it was annually celebrated or reenacted, and not the time it took to make the materials for the cosmic temple (p.92). This latter point will be the focus of his next chapter.
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