Were the birds and animals brought forth from the waters or formed from the ground?

In Hebrew, Genesis 1:20 does not say that the birds came from the water. The verse gives two separate commands: ‘let the waters swarm with living creatures’ (yishretsu ha-mayim), and ‘let birds fly above the earth’ (we‘of ye‘ofef). The birds are the subject of their own verb, so the waters are told to teem with sea creatures and the birds are told to fly; nothing is said about what the birds were made from. That is why modern translations read, as the WEB does, “let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the sky”. The KJV, like the old Greek translation, joined the birds to the waters’ command; Keil and Delitzsch point out that this older rendering made the birds ‘to spring out of the water, in opposition to Genesis 2:19’. Verse 21 likewise speaks of the sea creatures “with which the waters swarmed” and then adds “every winged bird” separately (WEB).

Nor are the land animals said to come from the water: “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind” (1:24). Genesis 2:19, where God forms the beasts and birds “out of the ground”, fits that.