21 God created the large sea creatures, and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. God saw that it was good.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
And God created A question here arises out of the word created. For we have before contended, that because the world was created, it was made out of nothing; but now Moses says that things formed from other matter were created. They who truly and properly assert that the fishes were created because the waters were in no way sufficient or suitable for their production, only resort to a subterfuge: for, in the meantime, the fact would remain that the material of which they were made existed before; which, in strict propriety, the word created does not admit. I therefore do not restrict the creation here spoken of to the work of the fifth day, but rather suppose it to refer to that shapeless and confused mass, which was as the fountain of the whole world. [1] God then, it is said, created whales (balaenas) and other fishes, not that the beginning of their creation is to be reckoned from the moment in which they receive their form; but because they are comprehended in the universal matter which was made out of nothing. So that, with respect to species, form only was then added to them; but creation is nevertheless a term truly used respecting both the whole and the parts. The word commonly rendered whales (cetos vel cete) might in my judgment be not improperly translated thynnus or tunny fish, as corresponding with the Hebrew word thaninim. [2] When he says that "the waters brought forth," [3] he proceeds to commend the efficacy of the word, which the waters hear so promptly, that, though lifeless in themselves, they suddenly teem with a living offspring, yet the language of Moses expresses more; namely, that fishes innumerable are daily produced from the waters, because that word of God, by which he once commanded it, is continually in force.
1 - "Ego vero ad opus diei quinti non restringo creationem; sed potius ex illa infermi et confusa massa pendere dico, quae fuit veluti scaturigo totius mundi." The passage seems to be obscure; and if the translation above given is correct, the Old English version by Tymme has not hit the true meaning. The French version is as follows: -- "Je ne restrain point la creation a l'ouvrage du cinquieme jour; plustost je di qu'elle depend de cette masse confuse qui a este comme la source de tout le monde." -- Ed.
2 - tnynm. "Significat omnia ingentia animalia tam terrestria ut dracones, quam aquatica ut balaenas." "It signifies all large animals, both terrestrial, as dragons, and aquatic, as whales." -- Poole's Synopsis. Sometimes it refers to the crocodile, and seems obviously of kindred signfication with the word Leviathan. Schindler gives this meaning among others, -- serpents, dragons, great fishes, whales, thinni. -- See also Patrick's Commentary, who takes it for the crocodile. -- Ed
3 - "Aquas fecisse reptare," that "the waters caused to creep forth." -- Ed.
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." These indicate a modification of what already existed. On the third day Genesis 1:9, Genesis 1:11 no verb is directly applied to the act of divine power. This agency is thus understood, while the natural changes following are expressly noticed. In the fourth Genesis 1:14, Genesis 1:16-17 the words "be," "make," and "give" occur, where the matter in hand is the manifestation of the heavenly bodies and their adaptation to the use of man. In these cases it is evident that the word "create" would have been only improperly or indirectly applicable to the action of the Eternal Being. Here it is employed with propriety; as the animal world is something new and distinct summoned into existence. It is manifest from this review that variety of expression has resulted from attention to propriety.
Great fishes. - Monstrous crawlers that wriggle through the water or scud along the banks.
Every living, breathing thing that creeps. - The smaller animals of the water and its banks.
Bird of wing. - Here the wing is made characteristic of the class, which extends beyond what we call birds. The Maker inspects and approves His work.
And God created great whales - התנינם הגדלים hattanninim haggedolim. Though this is generally understood by the different versions as signifying whales, yet the original must be understood rather as a general than a particular term, comprising all the great aquatic animals, such as the various species of whales, the porpoise, the dolphin, the monoceros or narwal, and the shark. God delights to show himself in little as well as in great things: hence he forms animals so minute that 30,000 can be contained in one drop of water; and others so great that they seem to require almost a whole sea to float in.
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the (q) waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good.
(q) The fish and fowls had both one beginning, in which we see that nature gives place to God's will, in that the one sort is made to fly about in the air, and the other to swim beneath in the water.
And God created great whales,.... Which the Targums of Jonathan and Jarchi interpret of the Leviathan and its mate, concerning which the Jews have many fabulous things: large fishes are undoubtedly meant, and the whale being of the largest sort, the word is so rendered. Aelianus, from various writers, relates many things of the extraordinary size of whales; of one in the Indian sea five times bigger than the largest elephant, one of its ribs being twenty cubits (r); from Theocles, of one that was larger than a galley with three oars (s); and from Onesicritus and Orthagoras, of one that was half a furlong in length (t); and Pliny (u) speaks of one sort called the "balaena", and of one of them in the Indian sea, that took up four aces of land, and so Solinus (w); and from Juba, he relates there were whales that were six hundred feet in length, and three hundred sixty in breadth (x) but whales in common are but about fifty, seventy, eighty, or at most one hundred feet. Some interpret these of crocodiles, see Ezekiel 29:3 some of which are twenty, some thirty, and some have been said to be an hundred feet long (y) The word is sometimes used of dragons, and, if it has this sense here, must be meant of dragons in the sea, or sea serpents, leviathan the piercing serpent, and leviathan the crooked serpent, Isaiah 27:1 so the Jews (z); and such as the bishop of Bergen (a) speaks of as in the northern seas of a hundred fathom long, or six hundred English feet; and who also gives an account of a sea monster of an enormous and incredible size, that sometimes appears like an island at a great distance, called "Kraken" (b); now because creatures of such a prodigious size were formed out of the waters, which seemed so very unfit to produce them; therefore the same word is here made use of, as is in the creation of the heaven and the earth out of nothing, Genesis 1:1 because this production, though not out of nothing, yet was an extraordinary instance of almighty power,
And every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind; that is, every living creature that swims in the waters of the great sea, or in rivers, whose kinds are many, and their numbers not to be reckoned; see Gill on Genesis 1:20.
and every winged fowl after his kind; every fowl, and the various sorts of them that fly in the air; these were all created by God, or produced out of the water and out of the earth by his wonderful power:
and God saw that it was good; or foresaw that those creatures he made in the waters and in the air would serve to display the glory of his perfections, and be very useful and beneficial to man, he designed to create. (Some of the creatures described by the ancients must refer to animals that are now extinct. Some of these may have been very large dinasours. Ed.)
(r) Hist. Animal. l. 16. c. 12. (s) Ib. l. 17. c. 6. (t) Ibid. (u) Nat. Hist. l. 9. c. 3. (w) Polyhistor. c. 65. (x) Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 32. c. 1. (y) See Thevenot's Travels, par. 1. c. 72. p. 246. Harris's Voyages, &c. vol. 1. p. 287, 485, 759. (z) T. Bab. Bava Bathra, fol. 74. 2. (a) History of Norway, p. 199. (b) Ibid. p. 210, &c.
*More commentary available at chapter level.