We have here the first part of the sixth day's work. The sea was, the day before, replenished with its fish, and the air with its fowl; and this day were made the beasts of the earth, the cattle, and the creeping things that pertain to the earth. Here, as before, 1. The Lord gave the word; he said, Let the earth bring forth, not as if the earth had any such prolific virtue as to produce these animals, or as if God resigned his creating power to it; but, "Let these creatures now come into being upon the earth, and out of it, in their respective kinds, conformable to the ideas of them in the divine counsels concerning their creation." 2. He also did the work; he made them all after their kind, not only of divers shapes, but of divers natures, manners, food, and fashions - some to be tame about the house, others to be wild in the fields - some living upon grass and herbs, others upon flesh - some harmless, and others ravenous - some bold, and others timorous - some for man's service, and not his sustenance, as the horse - others for his sustenance, and not his service, as the sheep - others for both, as the ox - and some for neither, as the wild beasts. In all this appears the manifold wisdom of the Creator.

And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, etc. - Every thing both in the animal and vegetable world was made so according to its kind, both in genus and species, as to produce its own kind through endless generations. Thus the several races of animals and plants have been kept distinct from the foundation of the world to the present day. This is a proof that all future generations of plants and animals have been seminally included in those which God formed in the beginning.

And God made the beast of the earth after his kind,.... The wild beasts, and the several sorts of them; beginning the account with the last mentioned, as is frequent in the Hebrew language, and so he made all the rest:

and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind; tame creatures, and all the reptiles of the earth: this most clearly shows and proves that the above creatures were not produced by the mere force of nature, or the powers the earth were possessed of, however the matter of it might be disposed and prepared, but by the omnipotent hand of God:

and God saw that it was good; that every creature he had made would some way or other be for his glory, and for the benefit of man. Picherellus thinks that all this belongs to the work of the fifth day, not the sixth; because as the vegetables, herbs, and trees were produced on the same day, the third day; so animals, whether in the waters, air, or earth, were made on one and the same day; and that it was proper a separate day should be allotted for the formation of rational creatures, Adam and Eve, and that it might appear that the same blessing was not conferred on brutes as on reasonable beings; and therefore the words with which Gen 1:24 begins should be rendered, "but after God had said, let the earth", &c. that is, after God had ordered this, and it was done, then "the evening and the morning were the fifth day"; which is what rhetoricians call an "hysteron proteron".

SIXTH DAY. A farther advance was made by the creation of terrestrial animals, all the various species of which are included in three classes: (1) cattle, the herbivorous kind capable of labor or domestication. (Gen 1:24-31)

beasts of the earth--(2) wild animals, whose ravenous natures were then kept in check, and (3) all the various forms of

creeping things--from the huge reptiles to the insignificant caterpillars.