Bible Study Seattle

In the fifth Yom (‘day’) of creation, YHWH created the birds and fish:
“Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.”  God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.  God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”   There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.”  Genesis 1:20-23

Mankind was created on the sixth.  We are operating with the assumption that these ages of creation were 7,000 years long.  It seems that death must have been in operation long before Adam and Eve were on the scene.  At a minimum, the birds and fish need to eat plants.  That means plants were dying.  It is likely that birds and fish were also dying, unless they were living up to 7,000 years.  This is probably why YHWH had to make a special garden for Adam & Eve so that they might be shielded from some of these realities.  It is very possible that Adam saw death and thus understood YHWH’s warning, “in the day [yom] that you eat from it you will surely die.”  Genesis 2:17

It is interesting that YHWH gives this instruction before the creation of Eve.  Is it possible that she did not witness death?  Is this why she may have been more vulnerable to Satan’s temptation?  We’ll have to ask her when she rises from the dead.  In any case, the ‘fall’ happened long before Adam & Eve were on the scene.  The fact that both grain and animals figure prominently in the Mosaic sacrifices shows that they have a prominent part in the paradise world to come.