So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that scurries and swarms in the water, and every sort of bird—each producing offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good.
Parallel translations
- WEB 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.
- KJV 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.
- BSB So God created the great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters teemed according to their kinds, and every bird of flight after its kind. And God saw that it was good.
- NKJV So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
- NASB And God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind; and God saw that it was good.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God creates sea creatures and birds after their kinds and calls them good. Even the great sea creatures are God's handiwork, not rival powers.
Overview
God creates the 'large sea creatures' and every swarming water creature and winged bird, each 'after their kind.' Naming the great sea creatures as creatures, not chaos-monsters to be feared, underscores that nothing in creation rivals God. The verb 'created' (used earlier in verse 1) marks the special introduction of animal life, and God again declares it good.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 17
- Ps 104:24–26Yahweh, how many are your works! In wisdom have you made them all. The earth is full of your riches.
- Gen 1:25God made the animals of the earth after their kind, and the livestock after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. God saw that it was good.
- Gen 8:19Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, whatever moves on the earth, after their families, went out of the ship.
- Gen 8:17Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, including birds, livestock, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply on the earth.”
- Gen 7:14they, and every animal after its kind, all the livestock after their kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind, every bird of every sort.
- Gen 9:7Be fruitful and multiply. Increase abundantly in the earth, and multiply in it.”
- Gen 6:20Of the birds after their kind, of the livestock after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every sort will come to you, to keep them alive.
- Exod 1:7The children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.
- Exod 8:3and the river shall swarm with frogs, which shall go up and come into your house, and into your bedroom, and on your bed, and into the house of your servants, and on your people, and into your ovens, and into your kneading troughs:
- Job 26:5“The departed spirits tremble, those beneath the waters and all that live in them.
- Job 7:12Am I a sea, or a sea monster, that you put a guard over me?
- Gen 1:18and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good.
- Gen 1:31God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
- Jonah 1:17Yahweh prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
- Matt 12:40For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
- Ezek 32:2Son of man, take up a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt, and tell him, You were likened to a young lion of the nations: yet you are as a monster in the seas; and you broke out with your rivers, and troubled the waters with your feet, and fouled their rivers.
- Jonah 2:10Yahweh spoke to the fish, and it vomited out Jonah on the dry land.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
From the first promise that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent (3:15), through Abraham's blessing to all nations and Judah's coming ruler, Genesis sows every seed that flowers in Christ — the true offspring, the better Adam, the ram caught for Isaac.
How Genesis 1:21 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.