" And God said, 'Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his 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 fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day " (verses 20-23).
On the fifth day God called into existence the denizens of the deep. He also created the birds and fowls of the air.
It is very instructive that Moses differentiated between every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth, and whales. The Hebrew word, translated whale in our Authorized Bibles is also rendered dragon, serpent, sea-monster, sea-calf. There is no doubt that Moses differentiated between fishes, cold-blooded animals, and warm-blooded denizens of the sea, which suckle their young, and are obliged to come to the surface of the sea to breathe. Whales, porpoises, dolphins, seals, etc., come under this category, all of them of large size. Do we not see in this the meticulous care of Divine inspiration? What could Moses know of such things? What opportunities had he, first in Egypt, then forty years in the backside of the desert keeping sheep, then forty years in the desert leading the children of Israel towards Canaan, to study piscatology, that is the scientific study of fishes? And yet Moses made no mistakes in his narrative. How the simple yet profound account of the reconstruction of the world stands in vivid contrast to the fantastic fairy tales of the ancients when they wrote on the origin of the earth.
Seven words only are allotted to the statement of the feathered kingdom, the birds and fowls of the air with their beautiful plumage and wonderful flight, among them such contrasts as the soaring eagle and the humble sparrow; the mighty condor and the tiny humming-bird with its brilliant plumage; marine birds such as the tireless albatross and the greedy cormorant.