Peter:It is a well known logical fallacy to argue that something is universally true on the basis of a rather small number of examples of it being true, taken in this case from a limited corpus - even supposing it is true of every case in the corpus. Besides, this is poetic or semi-poetic language in which the meaning of words can always be stretched beyond their regular dictionary definitions.
If you can find an example of "day" in the context of a number describing the "day" where the context indicates that it refers to something other than the equivalent of a 24 hour day, then you can say that Biblical Hebrew practice was different than modern English. I know of no such examples. I also believe that the English practice was influenced by Biblical Hebrew through early translations.
The observation is that every time a number is used to describe day(s) that "day" refers to the equivalent of 24 hours or a part thereof.
My evidence is Tanakh.
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