And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind. On the sixth day a further advance was made by the creation of terrestrial animals, all the various species which are, according to the Hebrew style, comprehended in three classes-namely, cattle, the herbivorous kind capable of labour or domestication; the creeping thing, the serpents and different genre of reptiles, and smaller mammalia; and beasts of the earth-wild beasts. They are all terrigenous-sprung from the earth; they pass their lives upon its surface, and are maintained by its produce. No information is given as to the mode by which the Creator brought them into being; and although the phrase "bring forth" is now applied to describe the ordinary way in which, according to the natural laws of animal production, the various orders of creatures have ever since entered the world, it must not be considered as giving any indication as to the particular mode in which the first animals were formed. The living creature. The singular is used collectively, to embrace the entire order, and the passage may properly be rendered, 'Let the earth bring forth all living creatures after their kind.