What Does Genesis 1:20 Mean?
And God said, "Let the waters swarm with swarming living soul, and let birds fly over the earth, upon the face of the expanse of the heavens."
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.THE KEY
The waters teem with “living souls,” placing sea life inside the same language of aliveness that Genesis later uses for the human.
THE MEANING
Life takes plural, moving form: the waters teem, and the sky fills with flight. The creatures are called a נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה (nephesh chayyah, living soul), so living soul names creaturely life here, not only human life. The reader meets creation as a field already full of living movement.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This verse undoes the belief that “soul” belongs only to humans or names a separate inner part: the same phrase “living soul” names creatures in the waters.
THE ROOT
יִשְׁרְצוּ
yishretsu
GROWS FROM
שרץ
Swarm, teem
The Hebrew repeats one seed in the verb and the creature: the waters “swarm with swarms.” What English divides into bringing forth abundantly and moving creatures is one image of life multiplying through movement.
ALSO GROWS
sharats: To swarm or teem
שָׁרַץ
The verb describes the waters filling with abundant life.
sheretz: A swarming creature
שֶׁרֶץ
The creature carries the same root as the waters’ swarming, linking the life to its movement.
חַיָּה
chayyah
GROWS FROM
חיה
Live, be alive
“swarming living soul” in this verse is chayyah. The full phrase is נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה (nephesh chayyah, living soul). Here the waters teem with living souls; Genesis 2:7 uses that same phrase for the human, placing both within shared language of aliveness.
ALSO GROWS
chay: Living, alive
חַי
It names the condition shared by the creatures called living souls.
chayyim: Life
חַיִּים
It carries the same root’s sense of being alive.
עוֹף
ʿof
GROWS FROM
עוף
Fly, soar
“birds” in this verse is ʿof. The Hebrew pairs the bird with its flight through the same root: “fowl” and “fly” echo one another. As the waters swarm, the sky’s creatures are named through the movement that fills their domain.
ALSO GROWS
ʿof: A flying creature, bird
עוֹף
This is the creature named in the sky’s domain.
ʿuf: To fly or soar
עוּף
The verb shares the root with “fowl,” making flight part of the image of abundant life.
THE PATTERN
The life God gives takes abundant, creaturely form across every domain.
And God created the great sea serpents, and every living soul that creeps, which the waters swarmed with after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that it was good.This sea, great and wide-armed; there are creeping things without number, beasts small and great.Nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, for he himself gives to all life and breath and all things.THE THREAD
And the LORD God shaped the ground-being, Adam, from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul.Genesis 1:20 calls the water creatures נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה (nephesh chayyah, living soul); Genesis 2:7 uses that same Hebrew phrase for the human. The shared phrase names living creaturely being in both scenes.
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