Genesis 1.20-23

And God said, "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the Earth across the firmament of the Heavens."

So God created the great sea monsters 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, a fifth day.

The Flood

Anthony Prete has an interesting discussion of The Flood and God's relations with Noah, and by implication the Israelites, in The Quaker Bible Reader. His argument is that God was not punishing evil people, but rather acting like a potter who simply can't do anything with a blob of clay and returns to the clay pile to get a new one. Like many Quaker and other scholars a primary interest is to refute the idea of the angry God, probably the most common vision of God in our age like most others.

Prete has particular reference to the writers of late Isaiah and quotes in Isaiah 54:7-10, speaking of the days of Noah and its close relationship to the Israelites at and after the Captivity.

The Flood of course is one of the Bible stories familiar to all sorts of people, and I for one feel called to disabuse people of their vision of the angry God in every way possible, primarily by interposing the God of Jesus.

Genesis 1.14-19

And God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the Earth." And it was so.

And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the Earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness.

And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

Genesis 1.9-13

And God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so.

God called the dry land 'Earth,' and the waters that were gathered together he called 'seas'. And God saw that it was good.

And God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the Earth." And it was so.

The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

Genesis 1.6-8

And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so.

And God called the firmament 'Heaven'. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.