What Does Genesis 1:22 Mean?
And God blessed them, saying, "Bear fruit and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply upon the earth."
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.THE KEY
The creatures are blessed before they multiply: abundance begins as a gift, not a prize they must earn.
THE MEANING
The living world still shows abundance as a capacity received: creatures fill the waters and earth according to the life spoken over them. Fruitfulness unfolds through increase, with each kind inhabiting its place.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that abundance must be manufactured alone gives way to the verse’s picture of fruitfulness unfolding within a spoken blessing.
THE ROOT
וַיְבָרֶךְ
vayevarekh
GROWS FROM
ברך
To bless; the same consonants also form the Hebrew word for knee.
“blessed” in this verse is vayevarekh. The root links blessing with the knee, bringing the image of a bent knee close to the word. Here, the creatures’ increase begins under a bestowed blessing, before they multiply.
ALSO GROWS
berekh: knee
בֶּרֶךְ
The shared root brings the posture of a bent knee into the sound of blessing.
berakhah: blessing
בְּרָכָה
This noun names the blessing itself, the spoken gift under which the creatures increase.
וּרְבוּ
urevu
GROWS FROM
רבה
Become many; increase.
“multiply” in this verse is urevu. The same increase is spoken over life in the waters and over the birds on the earth. Multiplication fills more than one living domain, carrying abundance through creation.
ALSO GROWS
harbeh: much, greatly, abundantly
הַרְבֵּה
This form carries the root’s increase into the sense of abundance.
rav: many, great
רַב
This related form gives the result of increase: what was one becomes many.
THE PATTERN
Life expands into abundance as it inhabits its place and receives what sustains its growth.
Bring out with you every living thing that is with you, of all flesh, of birds, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth, and let them swarm in the earth, and let them bear fruit and multiply upon the earth.This sea, great and wide-armed; there are creeping things without number, beasts small and great.I am the vine, and you are the branches. The one who remains in me, and I in him, this one bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.THE THREAD
And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Bear fruit and multiply, and fill the earth, and tread it under your foot, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the winged of the heavens, and over every living thing that creeps upon the earth."The same blessing verb, וַיְבָרֶךְ (vayevarekh), opens the charge to human life: be fruitful and multiply. The shared root ties abundance in the waters and sky to abundance on the earth.
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