Day 3 starts in Genesis 1:9, “And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together to one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so.” “Gathered together” is qawah, “to collect or bind together into one” (in traditional narrative this word is used, for example, to describe the twisting together of fibers to make one rope).
Here, it is used to describe how God formed dry land. “Dry” is yabbashah (“land” is in italics, indicating it is not found in the original text) and is used to illustrate the difference between ground that is under the water and ground above the water. For instance in Jonah 2:10, the large fish vomited Jonah out onto the “dry” (yabbashah); and in Nehemiah 9:11, the prophet describes the events of Exodus 14:22 when Israel walked across the Red Sea on “dry” (again, yabbashah).
“And it was so” is a common Hebrew expression that indicates what was previously described has been completed.
Then, in Genesis 1:10 we find, “And God called the dry land earth; and the gathering together of the waters He called seas. And God saw that it suited His purpose.” The word “earth” is, again, erets and means “habitable land or ground”.
In Proverbs 8:29-31 day 3 is described by the Son of God and tells us the purpose of God’s actions on that day – to restore habitable ground. In verse 31 of this passage “habitable part” (in the KJV) is the word tevel, which means “habitable ground”. God is preparing the earth to be inhabited again after it had been destroyed and was uninhabitable. It should be noted, as well, that the word yabbashah in both verses is singular, the dry land. In these two verses the waters are gathered together in one place, and there was only one dry land, or one continent. So, we should again jump ahead just for fun and look at a brief history of the dry land found in the first 11 chapters of Genesis, specifically 10:25 and 11:1-9.
In Genesis 10:25 we see the phrase, “….the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided.” “Peleg” means “division”. “Earth is erets (dry ground) again. And “divided” is palag, which means, to split apart or divide asunder.
Then in Genesis 11:1-9 we see the account of God’s judgment on mankind due to his refusal to carry out His command of Genesis 9:1 to replenish or repopulate the “earth” (again, erets, the dry land). A proper rendering of this passage tells us (without going into a lot of detail) that everyone on the earth was living in the same place, talking about the same thing, having a single purpose – which was to erect an idolatrous temple that would reach into heaven where they thought their idol gods lived. To set the context, remember this is after the flood. So, just as it was before the flood when all but 8 souls (Noah, his three sons and their wives, 6:18) were given over entirely to evil due to the Satanic plot to destroy the seed of the woman so the Messiah could not come (explained in detail in a later lesson), now the entire human race is on the brink of destruction due to their rampant idolatry, if God doesn’t step in and do something to prevent it! (Genesis 6:1-8)
And, just so you understand how this all got started (I mean the rampant idolatry), let’s take the time to go all the way back to Genesis 4:26 to a horrendous error in translation. The KJV (and almost all subsequent translations) has this as the rendering of the last phrase in this verse, “then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.” It should be properly translated, “then men began to call upon their gods by the name of Jehovah.” This is meant to describe the beginnings of idolatry when men began to ascribe to their man-made idols the nature or abilities of God. It also debunks the theory of the Godly line of Seth.
Now, back to Genesis 11. In verses 7-9 God confounded (balal, “to confuse”) their language, which polarized them into groups, then scattered (puwts, “to disperse”) them by dividing the one landmass into continents. This can easily be seen when you look at a flat map of the world, take the Middle East as the center, and move everything towards that center like parts of a puzzle. This can also be understood by current events as you study the cause of earthquakes, the movement of seismic plates caused by the pressure of landmasses still moving. This movement can still be measured; for instance, the distance from the west coast of California to the various Hawaiian Islands gets farther every year.
Returning to Genesis 1, now we’re ready for verses 11-13 and the conclusion of day 3, “And God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and trees yielding fruit with seeds in it after its own kind, and it was so. And the ground produced grass, and the herb yielding seed after its own kind, and the tree yielding fruit after its own kind, whose seed is in its fruit, and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.” Verses 11 and 12 describe three types of plants: 1) grass, typically, those with jointed stems, sheathing leaves and seed-like fruit (grains); 2) herbs, flowering plants whose seeds are in the flowers, stems are generally not woody (ornamental, medicinal, flavorful, aromatic); 3) fruit-bearing plants, generally, trees that produce fruit with seeds.
The word “good” in the phrase “it was good” is tobh, which means “pleasing”. In this context, it expresses the fact that God was pleased with what He had done because He knew it would accomplish His purpose – which was, to prepare the earth to be inhabited again.
Just a note to forego any possible confusion: the word erets, generally translated “earth”, is found in Genesis 1:1, 10 and 11 and has a different meaning in all three verses determined by the context (as some O.T. Hebrew and N.T. Greek words are). In verse 1, it refers to the planet “earth”. In verse 10, it is a reference to “earth” as habitable (dry) land. And in verse 11, it is “earth” as soil from which plant life emerged.