Page 25 - ADAM IN GENESIS

only focus on the creatures with which the audience is familiar such as dolphins, fish,
sharks and whales. This interpretation does sound reasonable and likely would make
more sense to a fifteenth century BC Hebrew listener. Another approach is the
Analogical-Day view which does not necessitate strict sequential order but allows for
some overlap in a generally sequential account. In this case, the list may be global, but it
does not require the appearance of land plants before trilobites. While I do not know the
correct interpretation, I prefer the Analogical-Day view with a local extent reading. In my
interpretation, the earth was primed for the appearance of aquatic life and birds that
would be familiar to the listening audience. The fact that trilobites pre-date land plants
does not contradict the passage because it was not the authors intent to even mention
trilobites to an audience that had never seen one.
Most YECs regard this list as global in extent. They insist the Scripture teaches trilobites
and dolphins were both created on Day 5 which is 48 hours after land plants were
created. This interpretation fails on certain levels. First, it contradicts the fossil evidence.
Even if one adheres to a 6,000 year old earth in which the fossils formed as a result of
Noah's Flood, the evidence still requires that land plants postdate trilobites because of the
laws of superposition and the fact that nowhere do they occur together in the rock record.
Second, our Hebrew listener would have no idea what a trilobite is, unless he experienced
one in his surroundings. Since trilobites lived in deep marine settings, that would never
happen. Therefore he would not have understood the passage that way. Third, where do
the aquatic plants fit into the global view of Creation? Are they grouped with the land
plants on Day 3? Or are they grouped with the aquatic creatures on Day 5? One can only
guess an answer based on reading into the text, or eisegesis. The text does not speak to
this, so a local view is to be preferred.
We find in this passage another evidence that God's command to be in Genesis 1 does not
necessitate the creation of the subject. Here God speaks to the waters that they should
swarm with swarms of living creatures. Directly following this is the verb bara. When
something new is created, the author carefully uses the term bara. Here, we are to infer
that the nephesh chayyah were divinely created after God's command to swarm. The
account of the light (Day 1) and the sun, moon and stars (Day 4) use the verb hayah but
there is no mention of bara. It appears from this text that the author is going out of his
way to make sure the listener knows the aquatic creatures and birds are new special
creations of God and not the rehashed appearance of something previously created. It
then follows that the light and sun are the appearances of something previously created
by the purposeful absence of bara.
Another interesting point made in this passage is the refined definition of erets. We saw
in verse 10 that erets was narrowed from the globe (v. 1) to the dry land. Likewise here
we see it only as the land portion of the globe. There is a clear distinction between
creatures of the sea and creatures of the earth. In verse 22 God blesses them and tells the
sea creatures to multiply and fill the seas (mayim) and the birds are to fill the earth
(erets). Moses clearly intends for the audience to see these two terms as opposites with no
overlap. The birds are to multiply and fill the land portions of the earth just as they do
today. They do not fill the seas because that is not what God commanded. With that
blessing, Day 5 comes to a close.
Creation Day 6: