Sea and Sky Creatures – Genesis 1:20-23

In terms of deep-water only creatures, there are an estimated 10,537 genera (plural for genus, a scientific category above species, so there are many more species of deep-water creatures).  There are also more shallow water species and freshwater species of creatures.  Bird species are estimated at 10,000, whereas land animal species are estimated somewhere between 3 and 30 million.  The sheer number of different creations by God is stunning.

20 And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21 So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”  23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. (Genesis 1:20–23, ESV)

Through divine revelation, Moses tells us that God made creatures to fill the waters (plural, indicating waters of all kinds, salt water and fresh), and that God made winged creatures, according to their kind.  We don’t know exactly what the word “kind” signifies in current scientific classifications, which include, from highest to lowest specification: domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species.  Birds are of the phylum Chordata (chordates possess a notochord, a hollow dorsal nerve cord, pharyngeal slits, an endostyle, and a post-anal tail, for at least some period of their life cycle), and class Aves (chordates that fly).  Bats fly, but are chordates in the class Mammalia.  Did Moses include bats in “winged birds?”  We don’t know.

According to Anjeanette Roberts, in Darwin’s time, a species was an organism that could sexually reproduce viable offspring, but since then there has been a problem defining a species.  Perhaps that is what Moses meant by “kinds,” perhaps he meant species.  Those who don’t accept the theory of macroevolution (that species can develop into other species) usually argue that only microevolution is possible (variations developed within species that accounts for variety and change).

This is the first time God is said to bless what He has made.  His blessing is a verbal empowerment to obey the command God gives to what He has created.  He tells the creatures He has made to be fruitful and multiply.  Are those two different activities or one?  The words in Hebrew are pǝrû vǝûrbû, a rhyming couplet that suggests they mean basically the same thing.  To be fruitful in this command/blessing is to be fertile, and to multiply is to increase in number.  The one leads to the other.  This blessing/command’s effectiveness is seen in the instinctive way all creatures reproduce.  God wants what was formless and void, what was unproductive and uninhabited, to be full, a world of extraordinary crowdedness and complexity that reflects His own productiveness and genius.