Genesis 1:21

By the fifth day everything these creatures need is in place: seas to swim in, a sky to fly in, lights to mark day and night, and plants, which God later names as food for the birds (Genesis 1:30). The sea has been in view since the Spirit of God moved “upon the face of the waters” before the first day’s work began (Genesis 1:2). Genesis gives no stated reason for putting fish and birds on the same day, but God opened up the sky and the waters together on the second day, and on the fifth he fills them together, each creature after its own kind.

“Fowl” is ʻôwph, a bird or more broadly any winged flyer, and it is often used of birds as a group. Modern English uses “fowl” mostly for chickens and ducks, and here the word covers every bird. It reaches beyond birds too, because the law lists the bat and winged insects under it (Leviticus 11:19, 11:20).

The “open firmament of heaven” is the sky above us, the wide expanse God made on the second day and named Heaven (Genesis 1:8). The KJV’s “open” gives the sense of a Hebrew phrase built on the word for face, paniym, meaning across the face of the sky, which is how the birds appear to someone watching from the ground. The BSB reads expanse where the KJV has “firmament” (raqia), and both name the same sky.

In the KJV the verse sounds as though the waters bring forth both the swimming creatures and the fowl, and some believers read it that way. The Hebrew can also be read as a separate command, and the BSB translates it let birds fly above the earth. That reading sits easily with Genesis 2:19, which says that “out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air”. On either reading God made the birds, and the verse’s clear concern is where each creature belongs, the swimming things in the water and the birds in the sky.

The chapter uses “created” sparingly. It is bârâʼ, the verb of the Bible’s first sentence, and in Genesis 1 it appears at the creation of the heaven and the earth (Genesis 1:1), here at the first living creatures, and at the creation of man (Genesis 1:27). In this form it always has God as its subject. It says that God is the one who brought something into being, so it fits a moment when something new enters the world, as animal life does here.

The Bible uses “created” and “made” side by side. Genesis 2:3 speaks of all the work “which God created and made”, and the land animals are said to be made (Genesis 1:25) and are every bit as much God’s work. The word also leaves room for God to use what already exists. This verse says both that the waters brought these creatures forth and that God created them, and man is created in Genesis 1:27 and formed from the dust in Genesis 2:7. Psalm 104 even says that creatures are created when God sends forth his spirit, which reaches beyond the first week (Psalm 104:30).

The “great whales” are the great creatures of the sea, a group that includes whales and is wider than our word. In the KJV’s day the English word whale could be used for any huge sea creature, and the BSB reads great sea creatures. “Great” is gâdôwl, from gâdal, to be large, and it speaks of size and of power.

The Hebrew word is tannîyn, and the KJV translates it differently in other places. It is “dragons” in Psalm 148, which calls them to “Praise the LORD from the earth” (Psalm 148:7), and “serpents” when Aaron’s rod and the rods of Pharaoh’s magicians are changed (Exodus 7:12). It means a great sea creature, a serpent or a monster, and the setting decides which is meant. Here the waters make it plain.

The nations around Israel often told of great sea creatures as powers of chaos or enemies of the gods. Scripture sometimes uses the same word as a picture of God’s enemies, as when Pharaoh is called a great dragon lying in his rivers (Ezekiel 29:3), and when the LORD promises to slay the dragon that is in the sea (Isaiah 27:1). This verse is where such creatures begin, and they are God’s own work, made at his word and declared good. Psalm 104 speaks of leviathan in the same easy way, as one “whom thou hast made to play therein” (Psalm 104:26), and the LORD sets out leviathan’s might before Job to show his own power (Job 41:1).

“Every living creature that moveth” uses râmas, to move about, a word that can describe gliding, crawling or swarming. Here it takes in everything that moves in the water, large or small, as the words “which the waters brought forth abundantly” make clear.

The word dinosaur is modern, but this chapter takes in every living thing, because everything that lives was made by God. Most dinosaurs were land animals, and those belong with the beasts of the sixth day (Genesis 1:24). The great reptiles of the sea belong with the creatures of this verse, and winged reptiles might belong here as well.

Believers differ over when these creatures lived. Those who read the days as ordinary days hold that dinosaurs were made in the creation week and died out later. Those who read the days as long ages place them before man. Some connect them with behemoth and leviathan in Job (Job 40:15, Job 41:1), while others take those to be creatures known today, such as the hippopotamus and the crocodile.

They are the first creatures made, and God blesses them as soon as they exist. Scripture gives no further reason, and it would be going too far to say that they matter more than the creatures made later. Plants were made earlier, and the chapter records a separate blessing on neither the plants nor the land animals. God’s wish for the land animals’ increase appears after the flood, when he brings them out of the ark “that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth” (Genesis 8:17).

God says similar words to man in Genesis 1:28 and to Noah and his sons after the flood (Genesis 9:1). From the start God’s blessing is tied to life that grows and spreads, and he later promises to bless Abraham (Genesis 12:2) with a blessing that reaches all the families of the earth (Genesis 12:3).

Both animals and people receive the blessing, and both are told to be fruitful, to multiply and to fill. The KJV’s “replenish the earth” in Genesis 1:28 is the same verb as “fill” here, mâlêʼ, so it means simply to fill the earth. Man also receives more. God adds “subdue it” and gives man dominion over the fish, the birds and every other living thing, and he goes on to speak to people about the food he has given them, saying, “Behold, I have given you” (Genesis 1:29).

Throughout this chapter God’s word acts on things that are unable to answer him, and light itself came when he spoke (Genesis 1:3). Later the LORD commands ravens to feed Elijah (1 Kings 17:4) and speaks to the great fish that held Jonah, and it obeys (Jonah 2:10). God’s word reaches his creatures in whatever way suits them, and it does what he sends it to do.

This verse shows that God cares about animals, because he blesses them on the very day he makes them, before any person exists to benefit from them. The rest of Scripture says the same. His tender mercies are over all his works (Psalm 145:9), and the creatures of the sea and land look to him for their food (Psalm 104:27). He kept birds and land animals alive through the flood (Genesis 7:3), and afterwards he made his covenant with every living creature, the birds included (Genesis 9:10). He tells Jonah that the cattle of Nineveh are part of his concern (Jonah 4:11). Jesus says that your heavenly Father feeds the birds, and then asks, “Are ye not much better than they?” (Matthew 6:26).

The blessing was spoken before sin entered the world, and it shows what God wants, which is seas full of life and birds in great numbers. Creation now suffers and waits to be set free (Romans 8:20, 8:22), and Hosea speaks of birds and fish being taken away because of the sins of the people in the land (Hosea 4:3). God’s law tells his people to spare a mother bird (Deuteronomy 22:6, 22:7), and Proverbs says that a righteous man cares for the life of his animal (Proverbs 12:10).

God gave his verdict on the day’s work in verse 21, when he saw that it was good. The closing line of a day usually stands apart from that verdict, as on the first, third and fourth days (Genesis 1:4, 1:5, 1:12, 1:13, 1:18, 1:19).

Genesis leaves the length of the days in years unstated, and believers who all trust Genesis as God’s word understand them in more than one way. Many read them as ordinary days, because each has an evening and a morning and a number, and because Exodus 20:11 gives God’s six days of work as the pattern for Israel’s week. Others take yôwm to mean longer periods here, as it has a wider sense in “the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens” (Genesis 2:4). Others again read the days as an arrangement of God’s work by subject. The question is taken up more fully at Genesis 1:5.

The order of this day touches the same question. Genesis puts birds on the fifth day and land animals on the sixth, while modern accounts of the deep past place land animals before birds. Believers who read the days as a plain sequence accept the order Genesis gives and conclude that those accounts of the past are mistaken. Those who read the days as long ages, or as an arrangement by subject, do not expect the order to line up in that way. All agree on what these verses teach, which is that the creatures of the sea and sky exist because God commanded it.