Charles Ellicott Commentary Genesis 1:3

"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." — Genesis 1:3 (ASV)

THE CREATIVE DAYS.

And God said. —There could be no voice or sound, nor was there anyone to whom God addressed this word of power. The phrase, therefore, is metaphorical and means that God enacted a law for the universe; and we find the command similarly given ten times. The beauty and sublimity of the language used here have often been noticed: God makes no preparation; He employs no means and needs no secondary agency. He speaks, and it is done. His word alone contains all things necessary for the fulfillment of His will.

So, in related languages, the word Emir, meaning ruler, is literally, speaker. The Supreme One speaks: for the rest, to hear is to obey. God, therefore, by speaking, gives nature a universal and enduring law. His commands are not temporary but eternal; and whatever secondary causes were called into existence when the Elohim, by a word, created light, those same causes produce it now and will produce it until God recalls His word. We have, therefore, nature’s first universal law here. What is it?

Let there be light: and there was light. —The sublimity of the original is lost in our language by the cumbersome multiplication of particles. The Hebrew is Yhi ôr wayhi ôr. Light is not itself a substance but a condition or state of matter; and this primeval light was probably electric, arising from the condensation and friction of the elements as they began to arrange themselves in order.

And this, in turn, was due to what is commonly called the law of gravitation, or the attraction of matter. If on the first day electricity and magnetism were generated, and the laws that create and control them were given, we have in them the two most powerful and active energies of the present and of all time—or possibly two forms of one and the same busy and restless force. And the law thus given was that of gravitation, of which light was the immediate result.