God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs to mark seasons, days, and years;
World English Bible
Genesis 1:14
This verse is examined in more than one Scripture Analysis section. Each lens is shown on its own terms, in the section's own words; GEBible reaches no verdict of its own.
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WEB World English Bible Public Domain ✓ - Modern English
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- ULB Unlocked Literal Bible An open-licensed literal translation produced for translators · CC BY-SA 4.0
- WMB World Messianic Bible The World English Bible with Hebrew names and Messianic-Jewish terms · Public Domain
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- BBE Bible in Basic English A 20th-century translation using a simple, limited vocabulary · Public Domain
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- MSB Majority Standard Bible A modern translation of the Majority/Byzantine text — the Berean counterpart to the critical-text BSB · Public Domain
- TCENT Text-Critical English New Testament A modern reasoned-eclectic New Testament (2022) · CC BY 4.0
- F35 Family 35 New Testament Wilbur Pickering's Byzantine-priority New Testament, with text-critical commentary notes · CC BY-SA 4.0
- OJB Orthodox Jewish Bible A Messianic-Jewish English Bible using transliterated Hebrew names and terms · CC BY 4.0
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- KJV King James Version Public Domain
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- GNV Geneva Bible (1599) The Reformation-era study Bible that preceded the King James · Public Domain
- DRA Douay-Rheims (1899) An English Catholic translation from the Latin Vulgate · Public Domain
- YLT Young's Literal Translation An extremely literal 19th-century rendering · Public Domain
- DBY Darby Bible A literal 19th-century translation by J. N. Darby · Public Domain
- WBT Webster's Bible Noah Webster's 1833 modernization of the King James Version · Public Domain
- TYNDALE Tyndale New Testament (1534) The pioneering early-modern English New Testament (New Testament only) · Public Domain
- JPS JPS Tanakh (1917) An early Jewish English translation of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament only) · Public Domain
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- LEESER Isaac Leeser Tanakh (1853) The first Jewish English translation of the Hebrew Bible (1853, Old Testament only) · Public Domain
- KJVCP KJV Cambridge Paragraph Bible David Norton's critical Cambridge edition of the King James Version, set in paragraphs · Public Domain
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Science (3)
Historical claims about the natural world, weighed against the scientific record.
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Light and day/night cycles existed before the sun.
Astronomy · Genesis 1:14-19
The scientific record: The Sun formed before the Earth, and the daylight the Earth receives comes from the Sun. (NASA)
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Plants existed before the sun.
Botany · Genesis 1:14-19
The scientific record: The Sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago, before the Earth and long before any plants. (NASA)
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Stars are small lights embedded in a dome above Earth.
Astronomy · Genesis 1:14
The scientific record: Stars are not embedded in any dome; they are distant suns scattered across space, the nearest more than four light-years away. (NASA)
Contradictions (1)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
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Does the Bible condemn astrology?
Leviticus 19:26 and Deuteronomy 18:10-12 ban divination and observing 'times' — language traditionally read to include astrology — and call practitioners an abomination. Genesis 1:14 says God explicitly made the heavenly lights to function as signs.
Critical scholarship: Genuinely disputed among scholars.
More on this question
The proposed answers and sources for each reading are on the question page.
Each section sets the viewpoints side by side; you weigh the evidence. Here, "critical scholarship" means academic study, not a value judgment. How this is built →
Other verses examined for the same kind of question or claim
Within each section, grouped by shared field or question type — not a cross-section comparison.
Cite this page
This citation refers to this GEBible page — the verse and the analysis gathered here. To cite the underlying scholarship, cite those sources directly.
"Genesis 1:14 — Scripture Analysis" GEBible, https://gebible.app/analysis/verse/genesis/1/14?version=WEB (retrieved 27 August 2026).