Earth

A qualification to the previous post: It is not dry land as such that produces fruit. After the waters are gathered, the dry land emerges, but God immediately called the dry land “earth” ( eretz ). As eretz , the land produces fruit (v. 11).

The same holds for all the historical analogues of Day 3: Dry land is a transition, a liminal passage, to fruitful eretz . At the exodus, Yahweh makes Israel emerge as dry land from the sea of Egypt, leads her through the sea on dry land, but the goal is to transform Israel from yabash to eretz , from (perhaps) wilderness to garden.