What Does Genesis 1:10 Mean?

Day six opens with the command for the earth to bring forth land creatures according to their kinds. The three-fold categorization, livestock (behemah), creeping things (remes), and beasts of the earth (chayat ha'aretz), is not a biological taxonomy but an ancient Near Eastern practical division reflecting the human experience of the animal world: domesticated animals used for agriculture and food, small crawling creatures, and wild animals. Each kind produces after its own kind, repeating the leminehu principle established for vegetation on day three. The land that day three revealed is now alive with every category of animal life.

The evaluative refrain "God saw that it was good" falls on the land animals before humanity is created. The world into which the human being is placed is already a world of declared goodness: the light is good, the land is good, the vegetation is good, the sun and moon are good, the sea creatures and birds are good, and now the land animals are good. The human being does not arrive into a morally ambiguous environment and determine its value; the value has been declared by the Creator before the creature made in his image shows up to govern it.

The land animal creation of day six differs from everything that precedes it in what follows it: humanity. The animals are made "according to their kinds," an external ordering principle. Humanity will be made "in our image, after our likeness" (v.26), an internal, relational ordering principle. The contrast between "according to its kind" and "in the image of God" is the sharpest categorical distinction in the chapter. Both are creatures; one governs the other. The difference is not of degree but of kind.