Be Fruitful and Multiply

Almost every Christian is familiar with the passage in Genesis 2, in which God tells Adam he must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  But how many realize God gave mankind ANOTHER commandment before the Fall? This other commandment is found in Genesis 1:28, and says in part, “Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it!”

I suspect that back in Genesis nobody had any problem with Part A of that commandment (Be fruitful and multiply!) But in Genesis 11 we see that mankind seems to have had trouble obeying Part B (Fill the earth and subdue it!) Instead we read, “Then they said, “Come, letʼs build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth” (Genesis 11:4 NET Bible). 

God wanted mankind to fill the earth and subdue it. Mankind wanted to stay right where they were. Verse 8 says, “So the Lord scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building the city.”

If we here in America don’t obey God’s mandate to be fruitful and multiply—well, others will.  And those who will become our successors will probably be a group—a very large group—of people who have obeyed that very first commandment recorded in the Bible: the one that tells us to be fruitful and multiply. 

Margot Armer