And God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living souls, and let fowl fly above the earth in the expanse of the heavens.
On the fifth day the world stops being empty scenery. Life swarms in the seas, and wings fill the sky. This one verse raises two questions. What new order of life begins here? And did God really say the water produced the birds?
Up to now God had made light, sky, sea, land and plants. Day five brings in something new, and one writer finds the sign of it in a single word. He quotes the verse in older English wording.
In verse 21 we get the word "created" for the second time. It appeared in verse 1, the original creation of the heaven and the earth. The intervening verses have told us what God made out of His original creation. Why does the word occur again here? We believe it is because here God commanded the waters to bring forth "the moving creature that has life." Plants show nutrition, growth and reproduction. Here we see a completely different order of life: creatures that can feel and move by their own will. Indeed the word translated "creature" in verses 20 and 21 really means "soul." So on this fifth day God brought in a higher form of life, a life that involves soul. That is why this was creation in the full sense.
Older English Bibles read as though the sea gave birth to birds. One writer traces the objection to the translation, not the text.
Chapter 2 shows that birds were made out of the earth; but Genesis 1:20, critics say, means that birds were made out of the waters. Genesis 1 says nothing of the sort. It agrees perfectly with Genesis 2:19. The objection shows the danger of reasoning from a mistake that has crept into a translation, instead of from Scripture itself. This verse does not teach that the waters were to bring forth birds, though our English version makes it look that way. It reads, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature, and let birds fly about the earth in the open expanse of heaven." The point is that the birds fly in that sphere. The verse never says the waters gave birth to them.
Answering the same objection elsewhere, he shows the two clauses stand apart:
Nothing really is said or intended about the waters bringing forth birds: the latter are spoken of in a distinct clause... The true rendering is, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly, etc. and let birds fly, etc." There is no discrepancy in this case to be reconciled.
The ESV above follows this reading: the waters swarm, and the birds fly.
The order of the six days is not random.
The waters now teem with life, and birds fly in the air... It is beautiful to see God's goodness at work in all this! He first creates a setting where His creatures can live. Plant life, for instance, needs dry land to grow on. So God first brings the dry land up out of the waters. Animals need plant food, so He supplies plenty of it before He brings these creatures into being.
The first blessing in the Bible does not fall on man.
The first blessing of creation was when God made the creatures that filled the waters and the air of Adam's world. They were the first to enjoy animal life in that world. God takes pleasure in blessing His creatures. Their life is lowly, yet it can still enjoy the fruits of His goodness. He blesses them above all with a view to their reproducing and multiplying within their own sphere.
Fish and birds are called "living creatures," where older Bibles read "living souls." Some argue from this that man is no different from an animal. The reply turns on how each one received life.
Animals have living souls as part of their creation. About them God said, "Let the waters bring forth," or, "Let the earth bring forth." But God formed man of the dust of the ground, and "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living creature." So man was unlike every other creature in two ways. God created him in His own image, and he "became a living soul" because God breathed into him.
One writer hears the voice of this verse again in the Gospels. A man standing before Jesus recognized it.
He felt that he was in the presence of the One whose voice said ages before, "Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures" (Gen. 1:20). He realized that God had come down from heaven to earth. His sinful condition rose up before him — his unfitness to stay in the divine presence. So he fell at Jesus' knees saying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord."
- Word — God speaks, and the seas and skies fill with life. The same voice later brought a man to his knees before Jesus.
- Soul — "Creature" here means "soul": life that feels and moves. It stands above plants, so the word "created" returns.
- Order — God prepares the home before He brings in the tenants. His goodness shows in the sequence, not just the result.
- Blessing — God's first recorded blessing falls on fish and birds, so they may multiply and fill their sphere.
- Distinction — Animals received life by a command to the waters. Man became a living soul when God breathed into him.
And God created the great sea monsters, and every living soul that moves with which the waters swarm, after their kind, and every winged fowl after its kind. And God saw that it was good.
The fifth day of creation fills the seas and the sky with life. Here the Bible uses the word "created" for only the second time since verse 1. That word, and the phrase "according to their kinds," carry the weight of the verse.
At verse 21 the word "created" returns, and one writer ties it to something the plant world never had.
In verse 21 we get the word "created" for the second time. It appeared in verse 1, the original creation of the heaven and the earth. The intervening verses have told us what God made out of His original creation. Why does the word occur again here? We believe it is because here God commanded the waters to bring forth "living creatures that move." In the vegetable kingdom we see nutrition, growth and reproduction. Here we see an entirely different order of things: creatures with the power to feel and to move by their own will. Indeed the word translated "creature" in verses 20 and 21 is really "soul."
Where this word appears next, and where it does not, shows where the real dividing lines fall.
God had created the heavens and the earth before. Now He creates animate life, another order of creation entirely. So Scripture does not use the word when God brought in the animals on the sixth day. It uses it again when we are told, "God created man in His own image" (v. 27), for man is a completely different order of creation. There is a link between sea creatures, birds and animals, but none of these have any such link with mankind.
Older translations read "great whales" here. The Hebrew word is far broader than that, and the same term shows up elsewhere for very different animals.
The word tannin, used in Genesis 1:21, Job 7:12 and Ezekiel 32:2, refers to any sea monsters, without defining any particular one. … The Hebrew word tannin is also translated in the Authorised Version 'dragon,' 'sea monster,' and 'serpent.'
Commentators differ over whether whales in particular are meant. One writer notes how carefully the account marks them off from the fish.
Moses clearly separated fish, which are cold-blooded animals, from the warm-blooded creatures of the sea. Those creatures nurse their young, and they must come to the surface of the sea to breathe. … What could Moses know of such things? … And yet Moses made no mistakes in his narrative.
Some have read this passage as saying the sea produced the birds. A correct translation removes the error.
A correct translation here, as the reader can see, destroys the error that commentators, both Jewish and Christian, have tried to explain. The sense is not that the waters produced the birds. It is that God made them fly in the open expanse of the heavens. Compare Genesis 2:19, which plainly teaches that God formed the birds out of the ground, just as He formed the beast of the field.
The phrase appears twice in this one verse: once for the sea life, once for the birds. Older translations read "after his kind," and one writer traces that formula through the chapter.
In Genesis 1 the formula — "after his kind" — is repeated ten times. It covers the plants in verse 11, the sea life and the winged birds in verse 21, and the beasts, the cattle and everything that creeps on the earth in verse 25. Why "after his kind"? That leaves room for each species. The lion does not mate with the tigress. The eagle does not consort with the goose. The wasp does not breed with the bee.
The record covers sea life and bird life as a whole, and it looks ahead to what God places under man's rule.
The clear intention was to impress on all who heed the written word that the fifth day's work covered the whole circle of water animals, as well as all the bird life known to mankind… If the inspired writer speaks of what concerns man in daily life, this agrees with the blessing God spoke: "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." Verses 26 and 28 confirm it strongly, for there God gives man dominion over the fish of the sea, no less than over the birds of the air.
One writer draws a personal lesson from this day for the believer.
The waters of turmoil, distress and unrest — that is, our experiences of deep trial — will bring forth abundant blessing in a way only God can do. … The power and grace of God produces some of our greatest blessing through our greatest trouble and sorrow. The birds flying in the heavens teach us that by faith our spirit may rise high above the level of our circumstances.
- Created. The word returns for the first time since verse 1. Creatures that feel and move by their own will are a new order of life, not a rearrangement of what was there.
- Soul. The word for "creature" here is really "soul." These are living souls, a step above the plant world.
- Kind. Twice in one verse God fixes life "according to their kinds," leaving room for each species.
- Distinguished. The great sea creatures stand apart from the swarming life beside them, and God formed the birds from the ground, not from the waters.
- Blessed. God calls the work good and tells it to multiply — filling the very seas and skies He would later place under man's rule.