"Let the Earth bring forth life" (Gen 1:24)

Reading through the story of creation

24 God thought, Let the Earth bring forth life, species by species:

וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֗ים תּוֹצֵ֨א הָאָ֜רֶץ נֶ֤פֶשׁ חַיָּה֙ לְמִינָ֔הּ

[Click the links if you are curious about those words in the translation above.]

We have seen that the first half of creation week parallels the second half, which means that now, on Day Six, something should be happening that corresponds with Day Three. That day, as you remember, was the day when the primordial chaos below Sky was organized into Seas and Earth.  It was also the only day so far when two stages of creation took place, not just one:  Plants came into existence when “the Earth brought forth greenery” (v. 12).  As you remember, in v. 11, God thought, Let the Earth sprout greenery.  The Earth did not actually do that, but instead “brought forth” greenery.  (I did not pay careful enough attention to this at the time, but have updated my translation now.)

Now God reframes his thought in line with what actually happened on Day Three.  There would seem to be two different ways to look at the change.  One is quite simple:  The “greenery” verb, which occurs only one other place in the Bible, was derived from its object, but there is no obvious way to create a verb from the Hebrew phrase nefesh ḥayah.  There are most definitely verbs related to each of these words. Perhaps you remember that in Exod 31:17 God catches His breath with a verb made from nefesh. And one can certainly “keep [someone] alive” with a verb from חיה. But the Hebrew system of 3-letter roots makes it impossible to combine the two words into a single verb that would match both parts of this phrase.

Another way to look at it is that God’s plan is dynamic.  Like the “God-wind” of v. 2, the quiet, methodical text of our chapter conceals a project dealing in immense energies.  This is not a kit being assembled step by step, but an experiment being worked on in God’s lab.  Just as the Earth did not “sprout” greenery but “brought it forth,” it is now to “bring forth” life.

The Seas were told to “swarm” with life (v. 20), but in that case God had to “create” the living things. (v. 21).  Here too the Earth will not in fact “bring forth” life (as it did the plants) — but we will get to that in v. 25.  In any case, what we have here is the matching panel to Day Three.  The creation of plants on Earth and of (animal) life in Seas and Sky may be thought of as “proof of concept” work for the project that will come to fruition on Day Six.

Once again the verb הבדיל hivdil ‘separate’ is missing, and once again it is replaced by the vast differentiation of species of animal life.  Lev 19:19 (excerpted below from the NJPS translation) can show us that this intrinsic separation by species is part of the separation/differentiation that was so important from the priestly perspective that lies behind Genesis 1, both for plants and for animals:

You shall not let your cattle mate with a different kind;

you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed.

“Kind” in that verse is not the same word used for “species” in our chapter, but the idea of differentiation, and its importance, both for the Day Three creations and for the Day Six creations, is clear.

animals, creeping things, and beasts of every species. And it was so.

בְּהֵמָ֥ה וָרֶ֛מֶשׂ וְחַֽיְתוֹ־אֶ֖רֶץ לְמִינָ֑הּ וַֽיְהִי־כֵֽן׃

The first stage of the two-stage creation process on Day Six, then, is creating the various species of land animals. But these are also divided into three separate categories:

• animals

• creeping things

• beasts

We have seen “creeping things” before.  Because everything in the Seas (with the possible exception of the sea-serpents) seems to fall into this category, I’m guessing that on land it refers to everything that slithers or scurries or does anything other than walk from place to place on distinct limbs.  It must certainly cover all the reptiles, and perhaps some of the smaller mammals too. (I’m assuming that our categories of birds, fish, and amphibians are all Day Five creatures.)  We’ll come back to this “creeping” word once more when we get to v. 28.

Now for the “animals” (בְּהֵמָ֥ה b’hemah) and “beasts” (חַֽיְתוֹ־אֶ֖רֶץ ḥay’to-eretz).  These are the larger mammals.  The word I’ve translated as “animals” really seems to refer to domestic animals and the others, the “beasts,” to wild animals.  There’s more to say about this, but I will keep it in reserve until Thursday’s post, when this first batch of land-life actually comes into being. For now, two notes about the Hebrew phrase I’m translating as “beasts.”

The most obvious thing to say about it is that these are being specifically characterized as belonging to eretz — that is, Earth. Since the other two categories are as much creatures of Earth as these, I must assume that this is not a pointed reference to Earth with a capital E but an expression that would have been commonly known. For that reason, I’ve left “earth” out of the translation. Don’t tell anyone, but later in the chapter I will translate eretz with other words and will translate a different Hebrew word as “earth” with a small e.

Now for something that should look odd to those who know any Hebrew. We would expect these “beasts” to be חית־(ה)ארץ. What is that extra vav doing at the end of the word? One possibility is metathesis (the fancy name for two letters switching places). If the text were originally חיות־ארץ, with ו and ת switched, we would have a simple expression using the plural: “earth-beasts.”

But the other creations, except for the stars, have used singular, collective nouns, as do these very same “beasts” in v. 25, so a plural noun here would be out of place. The possibility that is accepted by most scholars is that this is an archaic expression, using a case-ending of the kind that was common at an earlier stage of the language. That’s a second reason to think that ḥay’to-eretz is an expression rather than a deliberately chosen phrase.

We’ll talk more about these various categories of land animals on Thursday.