9 Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
11 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
13 So the evening and the morning were the third day.
We note that God gathers the waters into one place. This would seem to suggest that there was only one ocean and one continent. — Tayor, page 44.
In Genesis 1:10, we read for the first time, “And God saw that it was good.
On the creation of plants:
One. The description of grass, herbs, and trees would appear to be an all-encompassing phrase referring to all types of plant life. so all of it came into existence at this point.
Two. The plants were created with all their organ systems already in place and working. We are told that the plants were created ready to bear seeds and fruit, even before insects were created to cause pollination. This is not to imply that insect-pollinated plants could produce seed in any other way — after all, they only had a couple of days to wait. It does, however, imply that all systems were in place at the beginning, and did not have to evolve.
Three. We are introduced to the word kind. All the plants were created able to reproduce “according to its kind.” This is the first appearance of the word kind, and we need to understand its significance. The Hebrew word is min and it is being used in a specific way in Genesis. It is to be understood scientifically in a specific way. the biblical kind is not the same as the man-made classification word species. Species is an observable study that is in constant flux—a species being a type of plant or animal, isolated from others, incapable of interbreeding (usually) with members of others species…. Species are clearly observed to develop. — Taylor, page 45.
It is significant that these plants were made, not as seeds, but as full-grown plants whose seed was in themselves. They thus had an “appearance of age.” The concept of creation of apparent age does not, of course, suggest a divine deception, but is a necessary accompaniment of genuine creation. The processes operating in Creation Week were not the processes of the present era, but were processes of “creating and making” … Adam was created as a full-grown man, the trees were created as full-grown trees, and the whole universe was made as a functioning entity, complete and fully developed, right from the beginning.
Implanted in each created organism was a “seed,” programmed to enable the continuing replication of that type of organism. The modern understanding of the extreme complexities of the so-called DNA molecule and the genetic code contained in it has reinforced the biblical teaching of the stability of kinds. Each type of organism has its own unique structure of the DNA and can only specify the reproduction of that same kind. There is a tremendous amount of variational potential within each kind, facilitating the generation of distinct individuals and even of many varieties within the kind, but nevertheless precluding the evolution of new kinds! A great deal of “horizontal” variation is easily possible, but no “vertical” changes.
It is significant that the phrase “after his kind” occurs ten times in the first chapter of Genesis,. Whatever precisely is meant by the term “kind” (Hebrew min), it does indicate the limitations of variation. — Morris, page 63.
The terms “evening” (Hebrew ereb) and “morning” (Hebrew boqer) each occur more than one hundred times in the Old Testament, and always have the literal meaning—that is, the termination of the daily period of light and the termination of the daily period of darkness. — Morris, page 64.
It should be noted that the dry land here is not called into being, but rather called out from under the worldwide ocean, thus affirming what we have said about this chapter picking up at that point in the creative process where the raw materials of space and our planet, with its waters and submerged land mass, are already in place, the stage therefore being set for God to begin working with and within this “raw setting” to prepare a home specifically designed for the “good” of man. Indeed, the specifically anthropocentric (i.e., human-focused) perspective of the creation account is especially evident in the way that the second creative act on this day is described: after describing the creation of flora generally, reference is made to two specific groups included therein—namely, plants yielding seed (i.e., cultivatable plants consumable by man) and fruit trees, which are precisely the same two groups of flora that are reiterated by God in verse 29 as being for the food of man; yet in verse 30 reference is made to a third group of flora, the “green plant,” which was intended for the food of animals. This third group, it must be concluded, is not mentioned in this description of the third-day events, not because that group were not created, but rather because they are not relevant to the “good” of man, and they are only therefore mentioned in connection with man’s charge to husband (i.e., rule over) the animals once they have been created. — Wechsler, pages 66-67.
Not too much to add here. I have no problem with the idea of there being only one continent originally, which was divided at the time of the flood. Wechsler’s premise that God wrote to man from a man-focused perspective also makes sense.