The Mekhilta draws a stark contrast between the creative power of God and the limitations of human beings. The measure of flesh and blood — meaning any mortal craftsman — cannot even make a form from water. Water has no shape. It flows, it pools, it resists every attempt to sculpt it into a permanent structure. A human artisan can shape clay, carve stone, hammer metal. But water? Impossible.
Yet the Holy One, blessed be He, does precisely what no human can do. The proof is (Genesis 1:20): "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures." God commands water to produce life — not just shapeless life, but creatures of extraordinary complexity. Fish with scales and fins. Sea creatures with shells and tentacles. Whales with bones and eyes and beating hearts. All of them formed from water, the one substance that no human hand can shape.
The Mekhilta's point is not merely about divine power in the abstract. It is about the specific, impossible-seeming nature of creation. Every creature that swims in the ocean is a living refutation of human limitations. We cannot even make a statue from water, and God made living, breathing, self-reproducing beings from it. The gap between human and divine creativity is not one of degree — it is absolute.
This teaching appears in the context of the Song of the Sea, where Israel praised God for His incomparable power. The Mekhilta is providing the theological basis for that praise: the God who split the sea is the same God who filled it with life. He does not merely control water — He creates from it. And that is something no human king, no matter how mighty, will ever match.