The imagination of the early rabbis drew a sharp difference in this passage between God's dividing things and his gathering them: the former was something bad, the latter something good. They even suggested that this was the reason why the Second Day of Creation, which concerns dividing the upper and lower waters was not called "good"! Actually, however, when you think about both the dividing of the upper and lower waters in Day Two together with the gathering of the waters into one place of Day Three, you realize that in both cases order is being established, space created for the creatures that God is going to create. The waters under the expanse are hogging all the space, so that only aquatic creatures would be able to live there. God has in mind also creatures who live on the "dry land".
All of this reminds us that, although this first of two accounts of God's creating seems to follow a different sequence (humans created at the end [Gen 1:26-27] instead of at the beginning [Gen 2:7]) — a fact that has given rise to all sorts of unfounded criticism concerning "contradictions in the Bible", both accounts stress that in the mind of God the creatures come first and are the basis for the decisions of how the habitat will be designed.
Did you notice how each of the elements of God's creation is first denoted by a descriptive (almost antiseptically "scientific") label — "dry land", "collection of water" — and only after creation named by God with the traditional "non-scientific" labels "earth" and "seas"? It is as though God wants us to see his creation as something more than an arid technical term, but as the vivid, warm and personal and familiar names that a child learns to call them by. You can be much more comfortable and at home in a world that is not measured by the liter or the centimeter.
Beginning with v. 14 God starts to fill out the landscape with living things. You may think "Whoa! I thought we didn't get to the critters who live in these spaces until Day 4!" Well, in general that's so. But you see, the vegetation is seen here not so much as a living thing on the order of fishes, animals and humans, but as the provision for those living creatures. Fish eat aquatic plant matter. Some animals and all humans use plants as part of their diet, and perhaps originally (prior to the first sin) this was their entire diet. Do you remember that Isaiah prophesied that in the End-time "peaceable kingdom" of the Messiah the lion will eat straw like the ox (Isa 11:7)? This is an End-Time mirror of the Primeval (Edenic) State.
God first made the table (Earth = Dry Land) and then set it with food (plants) for the guests he expects. Some of the ancient pagan societies around Israel (the Hittites, for example) worshiped gods who were portrayed carrying the "horn of plenty", showing that they were thought to be the sources of bountiful harvests and rich yields of fruits and berries from which wine was made. Well, the Bible wants us to know that it is really He who has supplied humans with all these blessings. The "gods" of the nations are simply cheap impostors, trying to grab the credit that belongs only to the One God, who made heaven and earth.
And don't miss the way God sets up the plant world to be orderly. Charley Darwin may have thought he drove a spike into biblical faith through his theory of Natural Selection ("Evolution"). But that theory doesn't touch the genius of this Creation Account. The phrase "according to their kinds" isn't supposed to mean that there are never new species appearing, and others becoming extinct. This goes on all the time! Rather the phrase tells us something at once both simpler and more valuable: that farmers didn't have to worry that, if they planted wheat, it would sprout as asparagus! In other words, God created the very regularity, predictability and "natural law" that many skeptics think disproves God's existence!
You may not be a farmer, you may buy all your groceries at Dominicks. But I'm sure you can recognize how important it is for the world's traffic to run in lanes and stop at traffic lights. God gave us a world with order built into it, so that we might be able to use the brains he endowed us with to live wisely and safely and efficiently. The world envisioned in ancient paganism was totally capricious: the gods might choose to do anything on the spur of the moment, which made the pagan extremely insecure and bound him or her to constant rites to assuage the god's anger or to put him in a good mood.
How thankful we should be that on Day Three God established the order and regularity of space that gave us seas, lakes and rivers to bathe and fish in, and dry land to build our homes on and grow our food in! Quite the opposite of what is frequently claimed, it was biblical Israel and Christianity that paved the way for modern science. Had paganism prevailed we would all still be shivering in our huts, and muttering spells and sacrificing sheep and goats to ensure our food supply. Paganism dishonored the human mind: biblical theology liberated and honored the God-given mind.
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