Day 3: On Solid Ground

The events of the Third Day of creation begin with a description of God preparing land upon which plants will grow.

Genesis 1:9-11 English Standard Version (ESV)

9 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.

10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas.

And God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.”

And it was so.

These statements speak to a process that occurs at God's command.  For additional insight, Scripture describes other acts of God that pertain to these events.

Job 38:25-27 English Standard Version (ESV) 

25 “Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain and a way for the thunderbolt, 26 to bring rain on a land where no man is, on the desert in which there is no man, 27 to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground sprout with grass?

Pictured here is a process of erosion, operating over time, to cut a channel for rain down from the heights into the barren lowlands that then spring forth with vegetation.  The word grass [deshe'] used in Job 38:27 is the same word translated "vegetation" in Genesis 1:11 and distinct from the word [hasir or châtsı̂yr] used for grass for livestock in Psalm 104:14.

This should link the imagery of Job 38 to the creation story of Genesis 1 in the astute reader's mind.  This connection of course would be much more obvious to those studying this in their native Hebrew language.

Psalm 104 and Job 38 speak elegantly and beautifully of what God has done.  Genesis 1 shows us something of the sequence of events.  Interestingly, some commentators say that Job 38 dates to the time of Abraham, long before Moses wrote or compiled Genesis 1, and Psalm 104 of course came from David, long after Moses.  So these three perspectives, each perhaps building on the other, can help us to see more clearly what work God was doing in creating a habitat for humanity.

David contributes the following to our understanding:

Psalm 104:5-9 English Standard Version (ESV) 

5 He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved. 6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. 7 At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight. 8 The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. 9 You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.

To complete the picture, we turn to David's son Solomon whom God imbued with wisdom regarding all manner of knowledge about the earth:

Ecclesiastes 1:7 English Standard Version (ESV)
7 All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.

Bringing this all together, we see a process where continental crust is rising up above sea level, continents are colliding and thus forming mountain chains, rain clouds burst against the mountains sending torrents of rain, the rain cuts channels into the rock, the valleys sink down collecting channels of water in to streams, and the streams all run down back to sea level where the water is all gathered into the "one place", the ocean, which is itself comprised of multiple "seas" separated by continental landforms.

God causes all of this to begin on the Third Day with the purpose of supporting plant life on Earth.  The plants will be the food for birds and animals.  It's a process that takes an unspecified amount of time to unfold.

It is important to point out that the land forms of the Third Day are not the first land forms to ever exist.

Job 38:8,11 English Standard Version (ESV)
 8 “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb,
11 and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?

The "Deep", which we identify with the "sea" in Ecclesiastes 1, was obviously present since the First Day and it's waves would have crashed against early continents.  These continents are recycled by the process of plate tectonics, and thus, these early continents never supported plants.  They were void of life as described in Genesis 1:2.

Vegetation first colonized land along river channels, needing easy access to water because they did not have extensive roots systems and seeds.  Descriptions of the Devonian period illustrate what life was like on Earth during the early part of the Third Day, before the advent of fruit trees.  You might enjoy this artwork created over 100 years ago.

By Eduard Riou (1838-1900) from The World Before the Deluge 1872, United States [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The first continental land mass to support plants was Gondwana, which literally means "forest of the Gonds".  During the Devonian most land on earth was gathered into one large continent.  Gondwana primarily existed from 550 ma to 320 ma.  By 100 ma, or the end of the Third Day, it had broken up into the continents that we have today.

Therefore, the Ages of Joy creation timeline includes the formation of Gondwana at about 550 ma as being near the very beginning of the Third Day.

Geologic Record	Time (ma)	Biblical Account	Day
Ocean		The Deep
Continents to support plants	550	Dry Land that will have plants	3rd
Bryophytes[1] (first plants)	~470[2]	Vegetation - tender, new deshe'	3rd
Seeds	~370[3]	Plants yielding seeds	3rd
Woody Angiosperms	113-100[4]	Trees bearing fruit	3rd
Birds		Birds
C4 Plants and Grasses	~30[5]	Grass and cultivated plants[6]	6th
Cattle	20[7]	Livestock	6th
Humans		Man	6th
ma = millions of anum (latin for years) before present | July 21, 2018 | v1.2 Bryophytes Origin and early evolution of land plants Problems and considerations Seed plants by ~370 ma Appearance of Fruit Trees Anatomical enablers and the evolution of C4 photosynthesis in grasses Humanity's Grassroots: How Grazing Animals Shaped Evolution Bovidae