Teeming with Life: The Fifth Day Text: Genesis 1:20-23
Introduction: Filling the Emptiness
We come now to the fifth day of God's creative work. The stage has been set, the lights are on, and the foundational structures of the cosmos are in place. In the first three days, God addressed the problem of formlessness, the tohu. He separated light from darkness, the waters above from the waters below, and the dry land from the seas. Now, in the second set of three days, He turns His attention to the problem of emptiness, the bohu. He is going to fill the beautiful house He has just built.
It is crucial that we maintain the architectural symmetry that God Himself has established. Day Four saw God hang the sun, moon, and stars in the expanse He made on Day One. Now on Day Five, God will fill the waters and the skies that He separated on Day Two. This is not incidental; it is the deliberate pattern of a master builder. Our God is a God of glorious, intricate order, and His creation reflects His character. This is a direct assault on the pagan worldview, which saw the cosmos as the result of chaotic, violent clashes between capricious deities. The Bible shows us a world spoken into existence with calm, majestic, and absolute authority.
But it is also an assault on the modern, secular worldview, which is simply paganism with a lab coat. The evolutionist wants you to believe that life is the result of a blind, purposeless cosmic lottery. Slime plus time plus chance. Over untold eons of blood-soaked struggle, creatures randomly mutated their way into existence. But the Scriptures will have none of it. Life is not an accident. Life is a direct, immediate, and powerful creation of God's spoken Word. On Day Five, we see the explosion of life into the world, not as a slow crawl out of some primordial ooze, but as a teeming, swarming, flying testament to the goodness and power of the Creator.
The Text
Then God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the expanse of the heavens.”
And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
Then God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.”
And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
(Genesis 1:20-23 LSB)
The Fiat of Life (v. 20)
We begin with the divine command that brings forth this new form of life.
"Then God said, 'Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the expanse of the heavens.'" (Genesis 1:20 LSB)
Notice the language here. "Let the waters swarm." This is a word of glorious abundance. God does not create life timidly or sparsely. He commands the waters to teem, to overflow with life. This is not the picture of a single, fragile organism emerging by chance. This is a command for a finished product, and a command for multitudes of them. God's creative power is not stingy; it is lavish. He speaks, and entire ecosystems burst into being.
This verse introduces us to what the Hebrews called nephesh chayyah, a "living creature" or "living soul." This is a different order of existence from the vegetation created on Day Three. These are creatures that move, that have a measure of consciousness. This is animate life. And it appears in two great realms simultaneously: the seas and the skies. God is populating the domains He established on the second day.
The secularist must believe that birds are the distant descendants of dinosaurs, that scales slowly and miraculously morphed into feathers over millions of years. But God says He made them both on the same day, fully formed and ready to fly. He spoke them into the sky. The Bible does not present a long, meandering chain of accidental descent; it presents the immediate result of a sovereign command.
Dragons and Kinds (v. 21)
Verse 21 gives us the fulfillment of the command, with some very specific and important details.
"And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good." (Genesis 1:21 LSB)
Here again, the verb for "created" is bara, the same word used in Genesis 1:1. This indicates a direct, ex nihilo work of God. He is not reshaping previous life; He is making something entirely new. And what does He make? The text highlights the "great sea monsters." The Hebrew word here is tanninim. This is significant.
In the pagan myths of Israel's neighbors, the sea and its monstrous creatures represented the forces of chaos, often deified as gods that had to be defeated in battle. The Babylonians had Tiamat, the Canaanites had Leviathan. These were terrifying, primordial dragons. But here, the God of the Bible does not fight the sea monsters. He creates them. The tanninim are not rival deities; they are His pets. They are part of His good creation. What the pagans worshipped as a source of ultimate terror, our God makes on a Tuesday afternoon, as it were. This is a profound polemic. The dragons of the pagan imagination are on a leash held by the God of Abraham. He is utterly sovereign over the forces that other men fear and worship.
Then we have that crucial phrase, repeated twice: "after their kind." This is God's direct refutation of the entire edifice of macroevolution. God creates creatures with built-in boundaries. Dogs produce dogs, finches produce finches, and whales produce whales. There is fantastic variety within a kind, but one kind does not transmute into another kind. God has established the order of His world. The modern rebellion against this principle is not just biological; it is theological. When men insist that a fish can become a philosopher, they are not just making a scientific claim; they are making a theological claim about the absence of a Creator who defines and orders His world. They want a world without fixed categories, because they want a world without a God who has the authority to establish them.
And after this burst of creative energy, God steps back, evaluates His work, and declares, "it was good." The world teeming with sharks and squid, with eagles and sparrows, is good. It is exactly as He intended it to be.
The First Blessing (v. 22)
For the first time in the creation account, God bestows a blessing. This is a significant moment.
"Then God blessed them, saying, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.'" (Genesis 1:22 LSB)
Up to this point, God's Word has been creative. Now, His Word is consecrating and commissioning. He blesses these new living creatures. A blessing from God is not a pious wish; it is an impartation of power. He is giving them the inherent capacity to fulfill the command He is about to give them.
And what is that command? "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill." This is the first declaration of what we call the cultural mandate, or the dominion mandate. Here it is given to the animals. They are to be fruitful, to reproduce. They are to multiply, to grow in number. And they are to fill their respective domains. This is God's design for His world. He does not create a static museum. He creates a dynamic, growing, burgeoning world, filled with life. God loves abundance. He loves fruitfulness.
This stands in stark contrast to the modern anti-natalist, environmentalist mindset that sees life, particularly human life, as a plague upon the planet. The zero-population-growth enthusiasts, the climate alarmists who fret over every new baby as another carbon footprint, they are operating from a worldview of scarcity and fear. Their god is a stingy god, and their world is a fragile, dying thing. But the God of the Bible commands fruitfulness. His world is robust, and His first blessing upon animate life is a command to fill it.
The Rhythm of Creation (v. 23)
The day concludes with the now-familiar refrain.
"And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day." (Genesis 1:23 LSB)
The steady, liturgical rhythm of God's work continues. Evening, then morning. From the unformed to the formed. From the empty to the full. Each day is a literal, 24-hour day, establishing the pattern for our own week of work and rest. God is not in a hurry, nor is He delayed. He is working deliberately, joyfully, and powerfully, bringing His new world to completion. The fifth day closes, with the seas and skies now teeming with the life He has spoken into them.
Conclusion: The God of Life
The fifth day of creation is a glorious display of God's life-giving power. He is not the god of the deists, a distant watchmaker who wound up the universe and let it run on its own. He is intimately involved, speaking, creating, evaluating, and blessing.
This God who filled the ancient seas and skies is the same God who fills His people. When Jesus came, He announced, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full" (John 10:10). He came to a world that was spiritually empty, bohu, and He spoke. He commanded the spiritually dead to "swarm" into His kingdom. The book of Acts shows us this principle in action. On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit is poured out, and three thousand souls are added to the church. The kingdom begins to teem with life.
And the blessing is the same. "Be fruitful and multiply." This is not just a physical command. It is the Great Commission. We are to make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them. We are to be fruitful, bearing the fruit of the Spirit. We are to multiply, planting churches and filling the earth with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. The pattern of Day Five is the pattern of the new creation. God speaks His Word, He creates life where there was none, He forms His people "after their kind", a holy nation, and He blesses them with the commission to fill the earth with His praise.
And we need not fear the tanninim, the great sea monsters of our age, whether they are hostile governments, cultural chaos, or spiritual opposition. For our God is the one who created them. They are on His leash. He who commanded the waters to swarm with life is the one who is building His Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.