Genesis - Chapter 01 - Line 00021

Contemplative Summary

And God created the great sea creatures, and every living soul that swarms — which the waters swarmed according to their kinds — and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Here the command of the previous verse blossoms into being. The word vayivra — “and God created” — echoes the beginning of Genesis, reintroducing the mystery of bara, creation as emergence from divine imagination. From the depths arise the tanninim ha-gedolim — the great sea beings, mythic symbols of chaos now welcomed into order. Around them, life teems: the nefesh chayyah, living souls that pulse and ripple through the waters, each le-min, “according to kind,” carrying its own resonance within the harmony of the whole. Above, the winged ones stretch into open sky, completing the first symphony of motion across sea and air.

This verse reveals creation not as control but as invitation — abundance flowing through distinction. The divine seeing, vayyar Elohim ki-tov, affirms not perfection but coherence: the deep and the high, the many and the one, vibrating in alignment. In this moment, soul enters the story — not as an abstraction but as breath in motion, the spark that animates matter into being. To contemplate this line is to sense the ocean within the self, the unseen depths teeming with life, and to remember that even the great, the wild, and the uncontainable are called good.