Ramblings Regarding Genesis 1

I was reading the opening of Genesis this morning, and I realized something I had never noticed before, the refrain of separation, of distinction. God creates the light, and He separates it from the darkness. God creates the above and the below, and He separates them with a firmament. God creates land and sea by separating them, drawing the waters into one place. Then, this separation is refined: the night and day are given the stars and moon and the sun; The sky to have birds after its kind, the sea to have fish after its kind, and the earth to have animals which likewise reproduce after their kind.

It was an aspect of the story I had never noticed before, distinction and separation. Distinct in the sense that each of the living things, including the plants, are a kind which produces its own kind. Then, the earlier idea of separation, light from darkness, heaven from the world below, and dry land from the seas, seems to be in harmony with this idea, another form of it. And then we get to man, the pinnacle of God’s creation, made after the image of God. Like God, man is to appreciate all of the creation, is to have dominion over the birds, the fish, and the other animals. Here there is distinction: Birds to birds, fish to fish, animal to animal, and God creates something in His own image. God, separate from his creation, places His image, his stamp, within it. So, in the next chapter, a second telling of creation, we learn that man is alone in, is separate from, all that was made. He is distinct.