Genesis 1:25 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Genesis 1:25
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
gods in the ordinary sense · noun, common masculine plural absolute
made
וַיַּ֣עַשׂvai.Ya.'as
H6213
to do or make · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
beast
חַיַּ֨תchai.Yat
H2416
alive · noun, common feminine singular construct
earth
הָאָ֜רֶץha.'A.retz
H776
the earth (at large · definite article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
kind
לְמִינָ֗הּle.mi.Nah
H4327
a sort · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person feminine singular
cattle
הַבְּהֵמָה֙ha.be.he.Mah
H929
properly · definite article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
kind
לְמִינָ֔הּle.mi.Nah
H4327
a sort · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person feminine singular
creepeth
רֶ֥מֶשׂRe.mes
H7431
a reptile or any other rapidly moving animal · noun, common masculine singular construct
earth
הָֽאֲדָמָ֖הha.'a.da.Mah
H127
soil (from its general redness) · definite article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
kind
לְמִינֵ֑הוּle.mi.Ne.hu
H4327
a sort · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
God
אֱלֹהִ֖ים'E.lo.Him
H430
gods in the ordinary sense · noun, common masculine plural absolute
saw
וַיַּ֥רְאvai.Yar'
H7200
to see · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
good
טוֹבṭôwb
H2896
good (as an adjective) in the widest sense
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Jeremiah 27:5 I have made the earth, the man and the beast that are upon the ground, by my great power and by my outstretched arm, and have given it unto…
Job 12:8-10 Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.
Genesis 2:19-20 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he wou…
Job 26:13 By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Genesis 1:24-25
We have here the first part of the sixth day's work. The sea was, the day before, replenished with its fish, and the air with its fowl; and this day were made the beasts of the earth, the cattle, and the creeping things that pertain to the earth. Here, as before, 1. The Lord gave the word; he said, Let the earth bring forth, not as if the earth had any such prolific virtue as to produce these animals, or as if God resigned his creating power to it; but, "Let these creatures now come into being upon the earth, and out of it, in their respective kinds, conformable to the ideas of them in the divine counsels concerning their creation." 2. He also did the work; he made them all after their kind,…
SIXTH DAY. A farther advance was made by the creation of terrestrial animals, all the various species of which are included in three classes: (1) cattle, the herbivorous kind capable of labor or domestication. (Gen 1:24-31)
beasts of the earth--(2) wild animals, whose ravenous natures were then kept in check, and (3) all the various forms of
creeping things--from the huge reptiles to the insignificant caterpillars.
Adam Clarke on Genesis 1:25
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, etc. - Every thing both in the animal and vegetable world was made so according to its kind, both in genus and species, as to produce its own kind through endless generations. Thus the several races of animals and plants have been kept distinct from the foundation of the world to the present day. This is a proof that all future generations of plants and animals have been seminally included in those which God formed in the beginning.
John Gill on Genesis 1:25
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind,.... The wild beasts, and the several sorts of them; beginning the account with the last mentioned, as is frequent in the Hebrew language, and so he made all the rest:
and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind; tame creatures, and all the reptiles of the earth: this most clearly shows and proves that the above creatures were not produced by the mere force of nature, or the powers the earth were possessed of, however the matter of it might be disposed and prepared, but by the omnipotent hand of God:
and God saw that it was good; that every creature he had made would some way or other be for his…
The Church Fathers
And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and the cattle, and every creeping thing of the earth according to its kind. The change in words is to be noted, because above it is said that God commanded the earth to produce the beasts, and the cattle, and the creeping things, and the beasts of the earth; but now, in a changed order, God is said to have made the beasts of the earth and the cattle and every creeping thing of the earth; and it is to be understood that everything which was willed happened faster than said; and it matters not that human speech first names in the order of creatures what divine power created all at once.
But when it follows: And God saw that it was good, it is rightly asked why it is not added here what was said of the creatures brought forth from the waters: And He blessed them, saying: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. Is it perhaps because what was said by God about the first creation of the living soul commended, He left us to understand the same about the second? Especially since in the works of this day He would later add many other things; moreover, concerning man, He took care to necessarily iterate this, saying: And God blessed them, and said: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, lest anyone think that the honorable union was to be compared to sinful and disgraceful fornication. But when the worldly dwelling place was made and adorned, it remained that the inhabitant himself, for whom all things were being prepared, the man and master of things, should be created, it follows:
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Genesis — The five books of Moses were collectively called the Pentateuch, a word of Greek origin meaning “the five-fold book.” The Jews called them the Torah, i.e., “the law.” It is probable that the division…
B · Created by God — Created by God
Birds · Creation of, on the fifth creative day — Creation of, on the fifth creative day
Insects · Created by God — Created by God
Propagation · Of species, enjoined — Of species, enjoined
Reptiles · Created by God — Created by God
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Let the earth bring forth He descends to the sixth day, on which the animals were created, and then man. Let the earth,' he says, bring forth living creatures.' But whence has a dead element life? Therefore, there is in this respect a miracle as great as if God had begun to create out of nothing those things which he commanded to proceed from the earth. And he does not take his material from the earth, because he needed it, but that he might the better combine the separate parts of the world with the universe itself. Yet it may be inquired, why He does not here also add his benediction? I answer, that what Moses before expressed on a similar occasion is here also to be understood, although h…
The Sixth Day. - Sea and air are filled with living creatures; and the word of God now goes forth to the earth, to produce living beings after their kind. These are divided into three classes. בּהמה, cattle, from בהם, mutum, brutum esse, generally denotes the larger domesticated quadrupeds (e.g., Gen 47:18; Exo 13:12, etc.), but occasionally the larger land animals as a whole. רמשׂ (the creeping) embraces the smaller land animals, which move either without feet, or with feet that are scarcely perceptible, viz., reptiles, insects, and worms. In Gen 1:25 they are distinguished from the race of water reptiles by the term האדמה ארץ חיתו (the old form of the construct state, for הארץ חיּת), the b…
God blessed them: God’s blessing commissions and enables the fulfillment of what God has spoken (see “Blessing” Theme Note). • Let the fish . . . let the birds: These directives define the blessing. The fish and birds are fertile by God’s command, not by pagan ritual, as some of Israel’s neighbors thought.
Rashi on Genesis 1:25
ויעש AND HE MADE — He formed them with their full volition and in their full stature (Chullin 60a).
