Let there be Light

In the creation account of Genesis, the phrases ‘Let there be…’ or ‘Let the…’ are used over and over again, and I wonder why the text phrased it that way.  Perhaps it is nothing more than a way of speaking in the english; just a colloquial way of announcing something you are about to do.  For example: “let’s eat”.  So I look at the account and ask, is it just an English mannerism, or is it a reflection of something that is actually in the Hebrew text?  I ask this question noting the seeming irony in the story; that God is commanding these things into being with a word, ‘let’, which is often used for asking or giving permission.  “Let me out!”  “Mom won’t let me.”  “Did you let the dog out?”  I don’t know if there is an academic consensus about the optimal literal translation for the Hebrew text, but my thought is that “let” has to do with initializing the systems of creation.  God’s not just making the day and night, He’s letting the day and the night.  He is giving permissions, giving the objects their operations.  The operations and systems of creation are as amazing as the objects of creation, such that if someone offers a scientific explanation for phenomena that would otherwise be called ‘supernatural’ or ‘miraculous’, I would give God the glory for designing natural systems with such amazing capacities.