Translation
Then ELOHIM said, “Bring forth, oh earth, living creatures according to their kind,
Go to footnote numberincluding
the large easily domesticated animals, the small gliding animals,
Go to footnote numberand the lively,
freely roving animals
Go to footnote numberaccording to their kind. And it was so.
Paraphrase
Then THE CREATOR AND OWNER OF ALL THINGS said, “Bring forth, oh earth, living creatures according to their kind,
including
the large easily domesticated animals, the small animals that glide in large swarms, and the animals that are hard to train because they tend to roam over long distances; bring them forth according to their kind, and it happened just as He had commanded.
Footnotes
1
See the in-text comment below regarding the phrase “according to their kind.”
2: “small gliding animals”
Some have thought this was a reference to reptiles, while some say it was insects and other swarming animals. The emphasis of the Hebrew term seems to be on how they move; these animals move primarily in large groups such as swarms, and seem to glide with wings instead of feet, or they glide over the ground so easily that they appear to not have feet. To me that sounds more like insects than anything else, which tells us that God did not create all the flying creatures on day five, because he differentiated between these swarming bugs and other flying things like birds.
3: : “freely roving animals”
The emphasis here seems to relate to difficulty of domestication. Those in the first group are easily domesticated because they are willing to cooperate, those in the second group are hard to catch because of how they move, and those in the third group are hard to catch and hard to train because of their habit of roving over large distances (often at night). This by no means covers all the categories of animals we have classified today, but keep in mind that this statement relates to ease of domestication or man’s interaction with those animals.