Let’s sum up what we’ve seen in the creation story so far, as we did after the first two days. We said then that, on both days …
God planned the day’s creation
The creation came into being
There was an act of separation or distinction (remember that both of these are וַיַּבְדֵּל in Hebrew)
God named the creation.
Now, on Day Three …
God thought, Let the water gather in one place so the dry land can be seen
it was so
God named the land Earth and the water Seas
God saw that it was good
and
God thought, Let the Earth sprout greenery
it was so; the Earth did sprout greenery
God saw that it was good
As before, there are similarities to the earlier days of creation and differences from them. We said earlier that this is the first Day on which God had two ideas, not just one. (Surprise! He saw that each idea was good.) It is the first time that the verb להבדיל ‘separate, distinguish’ does not occur, though God implicitly does distinguish the plants, in two ways:1
- small plants
- fruit trees
There is a further, implicit distinction in that there are now many species of plants and trees which will reproduce their own kind and thus remain distinct. We did not discuss the word מין min ‘species’ earlier, but it’s worth noting that with the exception of Ezek 47:10 it occurs only here, in Genesis 6 and 7 about the species that were to be taken on board the Ark, and in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, the two chapters that describe the species that are permissible to eat and those that are not.
Why might there be two ideas on Day Three and not just one? A couple of possibilities come to mind:
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