And the earth brought forth vegetation, and plants yielding seed after their kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after its kind: and God saw that it was good.
All Commentaries on Genesis 1:12 Go To Genesis 1
Bede
AD 735
On the third day, when the waters flowed together into their places, dry land appeared and was soon covered with green grass and leafy groves; and with the beginning of the third age, when the races had separated into their own places, as for the idolaters, whose error, unstable and changeable by the vain doctrines of idols, as if by all the winds, is rightly signified by the term ‘sea’, the seed of the fathers was separated from their [the idolaters’] society and made rich with spiritual fruit, with the Lord saying to Abraham, ‘Go out from your land and kindred and from the house of your fathers into the land which I will show you and I will make you into a great race and I will bless you’, etc. until he said, ‘And in you the kindred of the whole earth will be blessed’. In that race the different ranks of the faithful, just like green grass and apple-bearing trees, came forth from one and the same earth, receiving the celestial showers of holy speech. However, this day also began to decline towards eventide, when that same Israelite people, casting aside the faith of their fathers and the ceremonies of the law that had been given to them, were both polluted by the wickednesses of foreign races and were also oppressed by slavery. Now the evening came when that same people, together with a king which they had chosen for themselves, having neglected God, was for the most part wiped out by the sword of foreigners.
