And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
What does Genesis 1:21 mean?
God commanded the fish and fowl to be produced. This command he himself executed.
Key themes
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Keep this verse inside Genesis 1:20-23 and alongside a few nearby related passages.
Commentary on Genesis 1:21
Created. - Here the author uses this word for the second time. In the selection of different words to express the divine operation, two considerations seem to have guided the author's pen - variety and propriety of diction. The diversity of words appears to indicate a diversity in the mode of exercising the divine power. On the first day Genesis 1:3 a new admission of light into a darkened region, by the partial rarefaction of the intervening medium, is expressed by the word "be." This may denote what already existed, but not in that place. On the second day Genesis 1:6-7 a new disposition of the air and the water is described by the verbs "be" and "make.
Key words
- created
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And God created great whales,.
- great
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And God created great whales,.
- whales
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And God created great whales,.
Context in Genesis 1
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Genesis 1 belongs to the opening movement of the book, especially the section often described as primeval history from creation to Babel. Genesis opens the whole Bible with creation, fall, flood, Babel, and the long patriarchal story that carries the reader from Eden to Egypt. Read this chapter with the wider themes of creation, fall, and covenant in view so the individual verses keep their proper weight.
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