פירוש על בראשית 8:17

הוצא BRING FORTH — The Ketib is הוצא and the Keri היצא — ;היצא means, “tell them to go forth”, הוצא means, ‘‘if they do not wish (if they refuse) to go forth, you make them go out”.

כל החיה, a general clause followed by a specific clause. The meaning of the expression כל החיה is “all the living creatures,” as in מכל בשר on a previous occasion, whereas the meaning of the words later on in 9,10 is the same. The verse speaks about the life-force {abstract, i.e. נפש החיה, often equated in the Torah with the life-blood, Ed.] hence the prefixes ב before the words עוף, בהמה כל הרמש.

But it is read היצא. Meaning, even without the ו it may be read הוצא. For the ו is the [sometimes] absent first letter of the three letter root (in place of the י of יצא). Thus, Rashi says it is read with a י, because the י and ו are interchangeable, yielding היוצא. (Maharshal) [Rashi knows this because] היצא means Noach should cause them to leave by themselves, whereas הוצא means he should remove them himself. (Kitzur Mizrachi)

הַיְצֵא. Während הוצֵא: führe sie hinaus, hieße, heißt הַיְצֵא: gib ihnen die Erlaubnis hinauszugehen. In der Form הוצֵא ist die Tätigkeit des Hinausgehenden ganz gegen die des Hinausführenden zurückgetreten, er ist ganz passiRaw Hirsch on Genesis 8: In הַיְצֵא ist die Tätigkeit des Hinausgehenden selbständig erhalten. Gib ihnen nur die Erlaubnis, so gehen sie von selbst hinaus. Das ganze Aufatmen der aus dem unnatürlichen Aufenthalt in der Arche in die freie Luft Tretenden liegt in dem: הַיְצֵא.

הוצא אתך, this word is to be read as if it had been spelled: “היצא!” “Take out!”

ושרצו בארץ THAT THEY MAY BRING FORTH ABUNDANTLY IN THE EARTH but not in the Ark: this teaches that cattle and fowls also were separated, male and female, in the Ark (Genesis Rabbah 34:8).

הוצא, the letter ו in the middle instead of the letter י is not unusual in verbs whose first root letter is supplanted by the letter ו. Nonetheless the ו is read as if it were a י. We have a similar construction in Psalms 5,9 הישר לפני דרכך, which is spelled הושר, “make Your way straight before me.” Proverbs 4,25 יישירו נגדך is another such example. The meaning of the instruction is: “take them out just as you have brought them in!”

ושרצו בארץ, a duplication of the blessing/command after the living creatures had been created (Genesis 1,22. The reason why this time G’d uses the word שרץ previously applied to the multiple births by fish, (1,20) is because this time only a very few of each species left the ark so that they needed the encouragement by being told they would once more be very numerous.
ושרצו ופרו ורבו, this is a most unusual sequence, beginning with the word שרצו, implying the very least individuality, switching to relative individuality by the use of the word פרו, implying single births, and ending with the word רבו implying single births at frequent intervals (compare our comments in chapter 1 20 and 28 on the meaning of these terms. In Bereshit Rabbah 34,8 the emphasis in this verse is on the word בארץ, meaning that whereas it had been forbidden to engage in reproduction while in the ark, now this could all be made up for.