44. Verses 24-25 And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, beasts and creeping things and wild animals of the earth according to their kinds; and it was so. And God made wild animals of the earth according to their kinds, and beasts according to their kinds, and everything that creeps along the ground according to its kind; and God saw that it was good.

Man, like the earth, can produce nothing good unless the cognitions of faith have already been sown in him enabling him to know what to believe and do. It is the function of the understanding to hear the Word, and of the will to do it. A person who hears the Word and does not do it is one who claims to believe, but he does not live according to it. Such a person separates hearing and doing, and splits his mind in two directions; and by the Lord he is called 'a foolish man',

Everyone who hears My words and does them I liken to a wise man who built his house upon the rock; but everyone who hears My words and does them not I liken to a foolish man who built his house upon the sand. Matthew 7:24, 26.

Matters of the understanding, as has been shown, are meant by 'creeping things which the waters produce', and by 'birds over the earth and over the face ¹ of the expanse'. Matters of the will are here meant by 'living creatures which the earth brings forth', and by 'beasts and creeping things', and also by 'the wild animals of the earth'.

Footnotes:

It seems rather circular to say that “good” in the Bible represents good, but in a general sense it's true! The case is this: The Lord is love itself given form and expression as wisdom itself, and that Divine Love and Divine Wisdom flow down into us, into the world and into the Bible in an unending stream with endless variety. Divine Love gives rise to our loves, our affections, our desires for good and the joy we can feel; Divine Wisdom gives rise to facts, knowledge, intelligence, understanding and human wisdom. And the more we can bring those two aspects of our lives into harmony, the more elevated we can become -- which will in turn make us happier, more useful, and ultimately more angelic.