What did God create on the third day of creation?

This is only the first half of the third day. It is a double day, as we may say, with God. Twice He speaks; twice He pronounces His work good. In the first half, the earth is separated from the waters; in the second, it brings forth the "grass," the "herb," and "the fruit-tree yielding fruit."

Third Day — The Earth. Here at last, the dry land emerges from the sea. The waters are gathered in one place, forming indeed by far the larger part of the surface of the world, and yet giving place to the dry land, which soon begins to smile with its coat of many colours in grass and flower and fruitful plant and tree.

The earth then was to have that form for the most part which God saw best fitted for His new purpose: vast continents and vaster oceans, islands large and small, lakes salt and fresh, swamps and torrents, mountains and rivers, plains greater or less, and valleys not merely produced by gradual erosion but often by deep and sudden fracture… here we learn that God laid down the great landmarks which remain to this day.

But there is a second part of His work to notice: vegetable nature for the earth that now is, that kingdom which stands between minerals and animals. God commanded the earth to bring forth grass, herb seeding seed, fruit trees yielding fruit after its kind, which has its seed in itself after its kind, as is said here most emphatically. This is the true origin of vegetable species for the Adamic earth. And as God pronounced good the dry land and the seas, so now the beautiful clothing of the dry land, and the abundant supplies for man and beast — at first indeed the exclusive food even for man.

Now we can readily understand the plants (and these were for the use of man and his fellow creatures) caused to spring forth on the day before without the sunbeam; but certainly not so of a geological age of grass, corn, and fruit. Yet we see the fitness of the due ordering of light and heat, as we have it, the next day, if the plants were to flourish, as well as for the animal life that begins after that according to His word.

Here for the first time we meet with the idea of variety and of species, and so for the first time we meet with the significant words, "according to its kind." They occur no less than ten times in this chapter, and always in connection with the appearance of some form of life which had within itself power of reproduction. Here at the outset then is stated most emphatically a great law that is binding on all living creation. However great and many the varieties which may occur, or be produced, within a species, there is no development into another species.

This account… makes it clear that vegetation was created in a state of perfection and maturity… Thus the tree preceded the seed, and not the other way round.

Before that day the waters of death covered everything; but on that day the waters receded, and out of the dry land sprang forth living, fruitful things… And we are twice told on this day, and on this day only, that "God saw that it was good." And what could this be for, but to teach us that the third day, the day of life springing out of death, was good not only as to creation, but also as to resurrection?

The third day is resurrection-day, and the earth rises out of the waters; for the power of resurrection known gives to the soul stability and fruitfulness… the waters now get their bound from God — a bound which they cannot pass, nor "turn again to cover the earth."