Seed

1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

Now that the earth has been formed, it's time to fill the void.  If I'm parsing this correctly, two things are being created: "grass" and "the fruit tree".  The grass is then described or defined, for no immediately obvious reason as "the herb yielding seed".  Similar the fruit tree is described as "yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself". 

This leaves "Let the earth bring forth grass and the fruit tree upon the earth."  I'm not sure at all the significance of the final "upon the earth".  I don't see the earth bringing grass forth upon the seas as being a reasonable alternative.

Interesting is that this reads as if God is instructing the earth to do the work,  But, since we've already been let down on the magic bits, I can just as easily see a bunch of guys scurrying around, first creating some plant RNA in a lab, then using that to make a few plant cells, which they cultured, and then ran around the dry land planting, watering, fertilizing, lighting.

Going back to the descriptions, there's a couple of points of interest.  One interesting phrase is "after his kind."  The author had noticed that apple seeds grow into apple trees which bear apples; that fig seeds don't grow into apple trees; that apple trees don't grow figs.  We pretty much take this for granted, but this is perhaps the key insight that led to the invention of agriculture.  And it's something the author didn't take for granted, but thought was significant.

There's a focus on seeds in both descriptions.   Seeds, of course, are important for the plants to reproduce themselves.  And they're important for agriculture.

Also, it's striking that "fruit trees" are being created, not just "trees".  In fact, based on the "herb yielding seed," I'd suggest that "grass" includes or means grains, wheat and so on.  Grains and fruits, the very products of agriculture.

In short, this verse seems to be completely focused on agriculture; specifically on early agriculture.  So at this point I'm ready to speculate that this may have been written by a relatively early farmer.

Not much else to say on this verse.  It has the same structure as verse 9, "And God said, Let the ...: and it was so."  But it has more detailed description than any previous verse.  And there's no reason for the descriptions.  They make no sense actually being spoken by God as part of a command; they were just very important to the author.

Mildly off track, I can't help but observing that "grass, the herb yielding seed" today sounds like marijuana.  It's tough writing something that's going to be read for hundreds of years.