The Fifth Day of Creation
2/15 Reading Portions: Genesis 48; Luke 1:39-80; Job 14; 1 Corinthians 2
Online Bible Audio/Readings Links (ESV)
2/15 Reading Portions: Genesis 48; Luke 1:39-80; Job 14; 1 Corinthians 2
Genesis 1:20-23
And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
RESURRECTION
The last three days of the six days of creation are somewhat of a fulfillment to the triune God’s prophetic foreshadows of the first three days. Light was commanded in the universe on Day One, and light was governed by the celestial bodies on the fourth day. An expanse called heaven (the sky) was created by command on the second day, with the heaven separating the waters below from the waters above, and on the fifth day, the waters below the sky as well as the sky itself was filled with God-created life.
While there are many things we can glean from this creation day, one of the most important in my humble opinion, is the resurrection: since the resurrection of Christ was mentioned for the last two days in our devotionals based on the fourth day of creation, it is a reasonable blessing to consider the resurrection again as our first meditation for the fifth day of creation, viz, the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures. From the six-day creation period, our awesome triune God had already taken into consideration the unique miracle of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection by creating the sea creatures. Consider this passage:
And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Jonah 1:17
Now, more than likely, Yehovah God didn’t create the huge fish (דג גדול, dawg ga-DŌL in Hebrew) on the fifth day, so it didn’t swim around for some 3,400 years. He appointed a sea creature in the days of Yonah to present the truth of Christ’s actual resurrection 600 years later. After all, God commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. I love how the KJV translates the Hebrew words וימן יהוה (vay-MAWN YHVH) as…
“Now the LORD prepared…”
It’s as if the Holy Spirit, through the King James translators, wanted us to know that although the appointment of the great fish was on the day Jonah disobeyed God’s command, everything was prepared since the creation, in the beginning.1
Tomorrow, we’ll meditate upon the birds of the air and how they glorify Jesus. Hallelujah! What a Savior!
Really, it was William Tyndale’s translation that used the word “prepared (1534): “Bvt ye lorde prepared a greate fyshe to swalow vp Ionas. And so was Ionas in ye bowels of ye fish .iij. dayes and .iij. nightes.” Jonah 1:17, see https://studybible.info/Tyndale/Jonah