This is the first locus in Gen 1 where parts of creation respond to and cooperate with God’s stated decrees. The featuring of waters responding to God’s orders corresponds to the idea in some pre-biblical cosmogonies that elements of creation, especially water figures like Tiamat or Apsu, have their own subjectivity. The Enuma Elish epic, for example, focuses on Marduk’s battle with and victory over Tiamat, a monster representing the ocean/salt water. More specifically, Psalm 104:6–7 describes the sound of Yhwh’s thunder powerfully forcing the waters covering the earth into a single place established for them. Nevertheless, Gen 1:9–10 contrasts with the Enuma Elish epic in lacking any personal characterization of the “waters” (no Tiamat here), and it likewise lacks some of the violent power seen in Psalm 104’s description of Yhwh’s restriction of the ocean. Instead, the “waters” in Gen 1 are not divine (cf. the Enuma Elish epic) or resistant natural forces (Psalm 104), but aspects of nature totally subservient to and cooperative with God’s divine will.
The description of this creation act concludes with God naming the revealed dry ground “earth” and the gathered waters “seas,” and then seeing that they were good (1:10). These are the last divine namings in Gen 1, marking the conclusion of the structural groundwork for creation: “light,” “darkness,” “heaven,” “earth,” and “sea.” There is no day formula here because day three features two creation acts, the next one following in 1:11.
Gen 1:11–13. The earth sprouting seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing treesGod’s next speech, like the first one on day three, calls on an aspect of creation to participate in the creation process, and there may be echoes here of ancient Near Eastern ideas of earth as the mother of life. But those echoes are faint, only consisting in the obedience of earth to God’s initial statement of intention “let the earth sprout forth sprouting plants…,” with the figura etymologica match between verb (sprout, דשא) and initial description of plants (דֶשֶׁא) in the divine speech helping to emphasize, through language, the coherence of the creation event. The text goes on to focus on two types of self-replicating plants, those that bear seeds (מזריע זרע) versus those that have fruit whose seed is inside it (אשר זרעו־בו … עץ פרי עשה פרי), each “according to its kind.” This is followed by the correspondence formula and a description of how the earth did sprout forth seed and fruit-bearing plants (11:11b–12).
In this creation of the plant world we see the clearest differentiation yet between God’s speeches in Gen 1 that command an ongoing element of creation order and the following reports that narrate the beginning of the execution of God’s commands. God’s order that the “earth sprout forth vegetation” in Gen 1:11 does not just hold for the initial creation, but institutes a longer-term order where plants will come forth from the earth. When earth then sprouts forth plants, each with seeds “according to its kind” (1:12), provisions are in place for this order to continue. Indeed, the focus already in God’s speech on how and where each plant carries its seeds indicates this focus on the self-replicating character of plants, and this will reappear in the creation of other living parts of creation in Gen 1.69 On the one hand, within Gen 1 there are the foundational, named, building blocks of creation—heaven, earth, seas featured in 1:6–13. On the other, there are the living elements that God has sprout from them and then self-replicate according to their kinds: plants, sea and air creatures, non-human animals, and humans. Seed and fruit-bearing plants are the first of the latter, self-replicating type. Yet they are distinguished from animals by the fact that they are fixed in place as earth’s plant covering, thus constituting a part of the cosmic house that God builds in contrast to the moving beings with which God later populates that house (Gen 1:21–27).70
The focus on seeds and fruit thus begins an emphasis in Gen 1 on God’s creation of a human biome that can sustain itself long after God’s initial creation work is finished. Moreover, the plant-focused food instructions at the end of the chapter (1:29–30) indicate that plants are considered to be a food-providing aspect of earth. There it is stressed that humans have the privilege of eating the seeds and fruits that are particularly emphasized in Gen 1:11–12, while earth-based animals are restricted to the leafy portions of these plants. In this way, even the general description of creation of plants in Gen 1:11–12 anticipates the concluding focus of the chapter on humans.
The day concludes with now familiar elements of divine approval (1:12b) and the passing of day three (1:13). The naming element is absent by now because we have now moved to God’s enhancement of structural elements of creation (heaven, earth, sea) with additional elements of plant life, stars, etc.
Gen 1:14–19. The creation and placement of astral bodies in the heavenly plateGod’s speech about the creation of the sun, moon and stars in 1:14–15a is the most extensive, by far, of God’s creation speeches to this point. The main reason seems to be the elaboration of the purpose of these heavenly bodies, initially stated by God to be “to distinguish between day and night” (1:14aβ), “for signs, for festivals, for days and for years” (1:14b), and “serve as lights in the heavenly plate to illuminate the earth” (1:15a). This focus on the purpose of heavenly bodies is resumed twice more in the following, both when God makes them (1:16bαβ) and then when God sets them in the heavenly plate (1:17b–18). Some have seen a conflict between these statements, but Steck argues persuasively that—in addition to a more obvious parallel between the distinguishing function of the heavenly bodies (14aβ and 18aβγ) and their illumination functions under the heavenly plate (15a and 17b)—there is some parallel between the list “for signs, for festivals, for days and for years” (14b) and the otherwise unparalleled element specifying the function of God’s creation of the two larger bodies “the large light [sun] to rule over the day and the small light [moon] to rule over the night” (16bαβ).71
| God’s creation speech 1:14–15 | God’s making 1:16(purposes of sun, moon; stars nothing) 72 | God’s setting in plate 1:17–18 |
| to distinguish day and night | [see below] | to distinguish light and darkness |
| for signs—appointed times, days and years | large light to rule daysmall light to rule night | to rule over day and night |
| as lights inside the plate to illuminate the earth | to shine on the earth |
The rather elaborate statements of purpose of heavenly bodies across 1:14b–18a coordinate the creation of these heavenly bodies with the creation of light in 1:3–4. Genesis 1:3b–4a has already asserted that God himself distinguished light and darkness through creating light, thus preparing for God’s naming of “day” and “night.” Therefore, the day-distinction function is not mentioned in the report of God’s creation of the heavenly lights in 1:16. Nevertheless, this function reappears and is highly focalized when God sets them in the heavenly plate (1:17a, 18aβ), implying that the light of the bodies set in the heavenly plate was necessary to mark days on earth after that plate had blocked the light created at the outset of creation. By this point any focus on “for signs, for festivals, … and for years” (1:14) or even on “stars” (cf. 1:16bγ) has fallen to the side. Instead, the focus in Gen 1:16–18 is exclusively on the day/night distinction introduced on day one, indeed a distinction doubly emphasized in God’s placement of them in the plate (1:17–18a) where they are to “rule” the “day” and “night”