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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - Genesis 1:20 - 1:23
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The Creation of Marine Animals and Birds
v. 20. And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. At God's almighty word the waters were to swarm a swarm of living beings, of marine animals, and also of winged animals, characterized by the fact that they fly over the earth on the face of the firmament, that is, on the side which is turned toward the earth. These animals were created in great abundance and are conspicuous to this day by their unusually great number, as careful statistics have shown.
v. 21. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind. And God saw that it was good. Not only the fishes were made by God to inhabit the seas, but He also created long and huge whales, crocodiles, and other monsters of the oceans and rivers, and every form of marine animal, no matter of what form and nature, with which the waters swarm, and every kind of winged animal, chiefly birds, all of them perfect and exactly adapted to the element in which they found themselves.
v. 22. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. As animate beings both the marine animals and those that inhabit the air received a special blessing of the Lord, not in a mere friendly and fatherly greeting, but in the conveyance of the power to reproduce themselves in kind. The fishes were to multiply at such a rate as to fill up all the oceans, and the birds were to become many on the earth.
v. 23. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.