What Does Genesis 1:21 Mean?
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.
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 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.THE KEY
The same Hebrew phrase, נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה (nefesh chayyah, “living soul”), names the creatures in the waters here and the human in Genesis 2:7.
THE MEANING
The waters teem with living souls, from the great creatures to every moving life. God creates them, the waters abound with them, and God sees that they are good. Human life belongs within this wider field of creaturely life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that “living soul” names only human beings: the same Hebrew phrase names the creatures filling the waters.
THE ROOT
נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה
nefesh chayyah
GROWS FROM
נפש
n-p-sh
The living self; an animate being or life as a creature.
English “creature” here and “soul” in Genesis 2:7 look unrelated, but both translate נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה (nefesh chayyah, “living soul”). The sea creature itself is named a living soul, joining human and nonhuman life in one phrase.
ALSO GROWS
nefesh: Living soul, person, life, or creature.
נֶפֶשׁ
The word can name a whole living being; here it describes the sea creature, not a separate inner part.
naphash: To be refreshed or rested.
נָפַשׁ
This related verb links the living self with being restored, adding the sense of life as something that can be renewed.
שָׁרְצוּ
shārtsū
GROWS FROM
שרץ
sh-r-ts
To swarm or teem.
“Brought forth abundantly” translates a verb of swarming. The waters are not a passive backdrop: they teem with the life God creates.
ALSO GROWS
sharats: To swarm or teem.
שָׁרַץ
The verse uses this root for what the waters do: they teem with life.
sherets: A swarming creature.
שֶׁרֶץ
The same word family names the creatures themselves, tying the waters’ abundance to the living beings that fill them.
THE PATTERN
God’s good regard encompasses creatures of every size and kind.
And God made the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing upon the ground 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. There the ships go, and this leviathan you shape to laugh in it.Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.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.The Hebrew phrase נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה (nefesh chayyah, “living soul”) names both the creatures in the waters and the human formed from the ground. The shared phrase places human life within the larger company of living beings.
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