You've imagined yourself reading the first chapter of Genesis through the eyes of an ancient Israelite, through parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. You've now arrived at the end of the first three days of creation, and been impressed by the author's skill in parallelism, the basic ancient Hebrew poetic form.
In particular, you have just understood the brilliant move by which the poet has combined the three categories of creation with the two symbols of chaos in the first three days:
| First Sentence: | In the beginning (time) | The sky and the earth (space and matter) |
| Chaos Symbols: | Darkness | The waters of the deep |
| The First Three Days: | Day 1: light, the first day |
Day 2: Sky Day 3: Earth |
Now you move on, wondering what the poet will do next.
Gods said, "Let there be lights in the sky, to separate day from night,
And let them serve as signs for festivals and seasons and years,
And let them shine in the sky to give light on earth.
Gods made the two great lights,
The greater to govern the day,
And the lesser to govern the night,
And with them he made the stars.
Gods put these lights in the sky to give light on earth,
to govern day and night,
to separate light from darkness,
And gods saw that it was good.
Evening came, and morning came, a fourth day.
The poet is paralleling day four and day one. On day one, gods spoke, and light was created; on day four, lights. Night and day were created on day one, now the night is populated with the moon and the stars; the day, with the sun. The light on day one is used to create time; the lights on day four mark, not only day and night, but the festival times, and the seasons, and the years. All of the themes of day one are picked up, and elaborated, by the filling of day and night with lights.
You read on, expecting a parallel of day two, and you are not disappointed:
Gods said, "Let the waters teem with living creatures,
And let birds fly above the earth, across the sky."
Gods created great sea monsters, and all the living creatures swarm in the waters, according to their kind,
And every kind of bird.
And gods saw that it was good.
So he blessed them, and said, "Be fruitful, and multiply,
Fill the waters of the seas;
And let the birds increase on land."
Evening came, and morning came, a fifth day.
There's a lot going on here. First of all, you notice that the poet has tied the themes of days two and three together again, this time by addressing the sky and sea on the same day. Once again, the spaces of the the first three days are being populated, this time by living things instead of lights. This strikes you as another very clever parallel of the word/spirit model introduced in the first few verses. Days one through three focused on structure, paralleling the function of the word. Now days four through six are focusing on content, paralleling the function of spirit.
The theme of multiplying (a kind of self-creation) and the repetition of the phrase "according to their kind" also connects this life to the plant life on day three.
You also notice that the poet is affirming Israel's cultural values. Living things are created according to their environment. Birds are designed to fly in the sky, fish are designed to swim in the water. You know that this is a fundamental part of Israel's world-view—built into dietary laws. Bats are unclean because they are not birds, but fly. Lobsters are unclean because they live in the water, but walk. They violate the fundamental plan of creation.
You expect that the next verses will focus on the creation of land animals, and have some additional flourish to parallel the creation of plant life on day three.
