Genesis 1:27

The world is ready for them. The dry land and plants came on the third day (Genesis 1:9, 1:11), the lights that mark the seasons on the fourth (1:14), and the creatures of sea and sky on the fifth (1:20–23). Now God says, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind.” The verb yâtsâʼ means to go out, or in this form to bring out, so the land yields its creatures at God’s order. The next verse names the maker, “And God made the beast of the earth”, using ʻâsâh, the common word for doing or making anything. The earth supplied the ground, and God gave the animals their being. Genesis 1 often tells what God said and then what he did, as with the firmament (Genesis 1:6, 1:7), and the two always match.

Genesis 2 adds that “out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field” (Genesis 2:19), and man too is formed from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7). We share that humble beginning with the animals, and their day of making, though only man bears God’s image.

The three groups name the animals as people meet them: the ones they keep, the small ones at their feet and the wild ones beyond. Cattle, bᵉhêmâh, are the larger animals, especially the herd animals kept as livestock. The creeping thing, remes, is any small creature that moves low along the ground, such as lizards, snakes, mice and beetles. The beast of the earth is the wild animal, whose only master is God: “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10). Verse 25 adds “every” to the creeping things, so even the smallest creature is counted.

People often ask where dinosaurs fit. The three groups are broad enough to take in every land animal, so a creature that lived on land has its plainest place here on the sixth day, though believers who read the days differently differ over when such animals lived. Job describes a huge creature called behemoth (Job 40:15), and Scripture leaves unsaid which animal it was.

The animals are “the living creature”, nephesh with chay, a breathing, living being. Scripture uses the same pair for man when God breathes life into him (Genesis 2:7), so the words show that animals are truly alive and leave open what becomes of a soul after death. What sets man apart in this chapter is the image of God.

Until now God has said “Let there be” or “Let the earth bring forth”. Here, for the first time in the Bible, he speaks as “us” and announces what he will make before he makes it, and that pause sets man apart from every creature before him. The word for man, ʼâdâm, means a human being or mankind as a whole, which is why God says “man” and then “let them have dominion”.

Being made in God’s image means at least that man resembles God and represents him on the earth. The word tselem, image, is a likeness or representing figure, often used elsewhere of carved or molten figures (Numbers 33:52), and man bears it as a living person. In the world around Israel a king might set up his image in a land to mark his rule there, and God gives that standing to every human being. The other word, dᵉmûwth, likeness, means a resemblance, and saying both strengthens the point. Scripture uses them interchangeably, with likeness alone in Genesis 5:1, image alone in Genesis 9:6, and both when Adam has a son “in his own likeness, after his image” (Genesis 5:3), the language of a son who takes after his father. Luke traces that line back to Adam, “which was the son of God” (Luke 3:38).

God made one creature able to know him, to reason, to choose what is right, to love and to rule. His next words are “and let them have dominion”, so ruling the earth under God belongs with the image from the start. He speaks to the man and woman (Genesis 1:28), and when he later calls to Adam, Adam answers (Genesis 3:9, 3:10), so we are made to hear God and answer him. When Paul speaks of the image renewed in believers, he names “knowledge” (Colossians 3:10) and “righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24), so the image includes knowing God and being like him in character. Christian books often call this by its Latin name, Imago Dei.

Jesus says that God is a Spirit (John 4:24) and that a spirit has no flesh and bones (Luke 24:39), and Israel saw no form when the LORD spoke to them (Deuteronomy 4:15). So our likeness to God lies in what we are and do, and our bodies are how we live it out in the world. Only the Son took on flesh, when he became man (John 1:14).

God now does what he said, and the story slows to say it three times. The verb bârâʼ, create, comes in each line, and in this chapter it is otherwise kept for the heaven and the earth (Genesis 1:1) and for the great sea creatures and other living things (Genesis 1:21), always with God himself creating. The lines fall into a pattern like poetry, and the event is fully real, just as Moses and Israel sing of the Red Sea (Exodus 15:1) after the crossing has been told. Here ʼâdâm means mankind, since the verse goes on to say “them”, and the same word later becomes the first man’s name: “Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam” (Genesis 5:2).

Have dominion, râdâh, means to rule, with the root idea of treading down. It is a king’s word, used of Solomon (1 Kings 4:24), and it can describe harsh rule, as when God condemns the shepherds of Israel: “with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them” (Ezekiel 34:4). Subdue, kâbash, is as forceful, used of a land taken and held (Numbers 32:22, Joshua 18:1) and of people forced back into servitude, which God condemned in Judah (Jeremiah 34:11, 34:17). Here its object is the earth alone. The earth is still unworked, and the first people are to spread over it, work it and make it serve life, for God formed it to be inhabited (Isaiah 45:18). Farming, building, learning and every good kind of work grow from this charge.

The way man rules depends on whom he rules for. The earth remains the LORD’s (Psalm 24:1), his rule is over all (Psalm 103:19) and every beast of the forest is his (Psalm 50:10), so man holds the world in trust. The man’s first task is to dress the garden and keep it (Genesis 2:15). The law gives the ox and donkey their rest (Exodus 23:12), forbids muzzling the ox that treads out the grain (Deuteronomy 25:4) and spares the mother bird (Deuteronomy 22:7). A righteous man cares for the life of his animal (Proverbs 12:10), whether he farms or hunts, and the law even instructs the hunter who catches an animal (Leviticus 17:13). Dominion rules for God and answers to him, and domination rules for itself. The king of Psalm 72 has dominion “from sea to sea” (Psalm 72:8) and uses it to deliver the needy (Psalm 72:12).

Man does stand above the animals: “ye are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:31), though God remembers every sparrow (Luke 12:6). After the flood God gives animals to man for food (Genesis 9:3) and in the same passage forbids shedding man’s blood (Genesis 9:6). The animals remain God’s and good, so man’s higher place is a duty toward them. Psalm 8 marvels, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:4), and praises the honour God gave him (Psalm 8:5–8): “Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands” (Psalm 8:6).

The first words the Bible records God saying to people begin with a gift, and they go to “them”, the man and woman together and the race that will come from them. To bless, bârak, comes from a root meaning to kneel. When God blesses people he gives them something good and the ability to enjoy it, so everything he asks of them here he first enables them to do. The fish and birds had a like blessing on the fifth day (Genesis 1:22), and fruitfulness stays God’s gift through Scripture: “I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful” (Leviticus 26:9). The man who fears the LORD has children like olive plants round his table (Psalm 128:3, 128:4), and children are a good gift (Psalm 127:3).

“Replenish” in the KJV means fill. Many hear “fill again” today, as if the earth had been full before, but in the English of the KJV the word simply meant to fill, and the Hebrew mâlêʼ means to fill. The BSB reads fill, and the KJV itself has “fill” for the same word in Genesis 1:22. So this word gives no support to the idea of an earlier world destroyed before the six days.

The fall made the charge harder, with pain in childbirth and sweat in work (Genesis 3:16, 3:19). Yet after the flood God speaks the same words: “And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Genesis 9:1, and again at 9:7). What follows is new, the animals’ fear of man and their gift as food (Genesis 9:2, 9:3), and the blessing stays the same. Scripture sets no number at which the earth counts as full, so we can think soberly about how to live on the land and still welcome every child as God’s gift.

“Behold, I have given you” bids the man and woman look around them. The verb nâthan, give, makes all of it a gift before they have planted anything, from plants that have been growing since the third day. The gift covers “all the earth”, and it lasts, because herb and fruit hold seed, zeraʻ, and each harvest brings the next. “Meat” in the KJV means food of any kind, as the Hebrew ʼoklâh does, so the food named here is plants. The one limit comes in the garden, where God again lets man eat freely of every tree and names a single exception (Genesis 2:16, 2:17), like a generous host who offers the whole house and asks you to leave one room alone.

To every beast, bird and creeping thing “wherein there is life”, again nephesh and chay, God gives “every green herb”. The word for green, yereq, means fresh green growth, and the word for herb, ʻeseb, means grass or tender plants. Insects belong among the creeping things, and fish lie outside this list of land animals and birds. God feeds the animals himself: “He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle” (Psalm 104:14), “He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry” (Psalm 147:9), and all of them wait on him for their food (Psalm 104:27–28, 145:15). “Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing” (Psalm 145:16). Jesus says that your Father feeds the birds, and that you matter more than they do (Matthew 6:26).

God looks at “every thing that he had made”, man in his image included, and calls it “very good”. The verb râʼâh, saw, means to see and also to consider, and God looks over his work as a maker does. He knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10), so the verdict is written for us, to tell us what he himself thinks of his world, and “behold” bids us stop and look. “Good” was said day after day (Genesis 1:4, 1:10, 1:12, 1:18, 1:21, 1:25), and now mᵉʼôd, very, makes it emphatic over the finished whole, with man in his place and every creature fed. Here ṭôwb means that everything was as God wanted it and did what he made it to do. His work is perfect (Deuteronomy 32:4), he rejoices in it (Psalm 104:31), and the psalmist sings, “O LORD, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches” (Psalm 104:24).

All things were made through the Son (John 1:3, Colossians 1:16), and “by him all things consist” (Colossians 1:17). He is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) and “the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3), and believers are being shaped to be like him (Romans 8:29), changed into the same image from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18) and “renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Colossians 3:10). So the purpose God announced on this day is still at work in everyone who belongs to Christ.

Christ is the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), and the wind and the sea obeyed him (Mark 4:39). Hebrews takes up Psalm 8 and admits that all things are still to be put under man, and then says that we see Jesus, crowned with glory and honour after suffering death (Hebrews 2:8, 2:9). He holds perfectly the rule man spoiled, and his people will share it through him. He is the bread of life (John 6:35), and the tree of life in the new Jerusalem yields its fruit every month (Revelation 22:2). Anyone in Christ is already a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17), and the God who called the first world very good says he will make all things new (Revelation 21:1–5, 21:5).

“I have made the earth, the man and the beast that are upon the ground,” says the LORD (Jeremiah 27:5), and in his hand “is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind” (Job 12:10). Your worth comes from that hand. The image of God was given to you when you were made, and it stays with you through failure, age, sickness and neglect, whatever anyone has said about your sex, your background, your body or your mind. It rests just as surely on the person who annoys you and the person too weak to speak for himself, so the way we speak of anyone should honour the likeness they carry (James 3:9).

Whatever you tend, whether a family, a field, a business or a few animals, you hold it from God and will answer to him for it. The blessing came before the charge, so you can do that work leaning on him and with thanks. Every meal comes from the hand that said “I have given you”, and every good thing he made is to be received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:4). “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1), and the rest of creation does too, even now, so noticing what God has made and thanking him is a way of agreeing with what he said on this day.

All have sinned (Romans 3:23), and the whole creation groans as it waits to be set free (Romans 8:19–23, 8:21, 8:22, 8:23). When something in the world feels wrong, you are right, because the ruin sin brought is foreign to what God called very good. God loved us while we were still sinners and gave his Son for us (Romans 5:8), and in Christ we are “his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Ephesians 2:10). The LORD is near to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18), and he promises a day when he will wipe away every tear and put an end to death (Revelation 21:4).