What Does Genesis 1:13 Mean?

The dietary provision of verse 29-30 declares that God has given humanity every plant yielding seed and every tree with seed in its fruit for food, and every green plant to every animal. Two features of this provision define the pre-fall created order: it is vegetarian, and it is comprehensive. Every creature, from the human made in God's image to the land animal to the creeping thing, receives sustenance by plant means. There is no predation in the diet of the created order. The death of one creature to feed another has not yet entered the created world.

The provision comes in the act of creation itself: God does not create creatures and then leave them to discover food. The food system is part of the creative act. The God who makes the creature also makes the provision; the two acts are not separated. This pattern, creator as provider, is established here as the baseline. After the flood, the dietary provision will be modified (9:3), and after the fall, the earth's generosity will be diminished by the curse. But the original terms were: every plant and every seed-bearing tree, for every creature.

The day six provision, given in this verse and the following, is the culminating display of the chapter's central theme: God is the one who supplies what his creatures need. Psalm 104, the great creation psalm, returns to this provision theology: "The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God" (v.21); "When you open your hand, they are filled with good things" (v.28). The open hand of God described in Psalm 104 is first extended in Genesis 1:29-30. What Jesus will say, "your heavenly Father feeds them" (Matthew 6:26), has its textual root in the creation's dietary provision.