What Does Genesis 9:7 Mean?
And you, bear fruit and multiply; swarm in the earth, and multiply in it.
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 you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.THE KEY
The phrase “bring forth abundantly” is literally a command to “swarm,” picturing human life as a teeming presence in the earth.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to you as part of a people whose life bears fruit, increases, and spreads through the earth. Its repeated call to multiply frames the image of swarming, so abundance is presented as life filling the place where it lives.
THE ROOT
שִׁרְצוּ
shir'tzu
GROWS FROM
שרץ
Swarm, teem; move in great numbers.
The verb translated “bring forth abundantly” is an imperative to swarm. Its word-family names swarming creatures too, so the verse pictures abundance as life moving through the land in numbers.
ALSO GROWS
sherets: A swarming or creeping creature.
שֶׁרֶץ
The noun names the creatures associated with this root’s image of life swarming.
sheratzim: Swarming creatures; creeping things.
שְׁרָצִים
This plural form shows the same root describing a multitude of moving life.
פְּרוּ
peru
GROWS FROM
פרה
Bear fruit; become fruitful.
“bear fruit” in this verse is peru. The word rendered “fruitful” is a verb of bearing fruit. Its family includes the word for fruit and appears in the name Ephraim, explained as “fruitful”; the root pictures fruitfulness as an ongoing action.
ALSO GROWS
peri: Fruit.
פְּרִי
The noun makes explicit what the verb “be fruitful” carries within it: bearing fruit.
Efrayim: Ephraim, a name associated with fruitfulness.
אֶפְרַיִם
The name is explained through this root when Joseph says God has made him fruitful in the land of his affliction (Genesis 41:52).
רְבוּ
revu
GROWS FROM
רבה
Become many; increase.
“multiply” in this verse is revu. The root describes becoming many. Its repetition at both ends of the verse frames the swarm with increase, making expansion the sentence’s recurring motion.
ALSO GROWS
hirbah: Increase; make many.
הִרְבָּה
This causative form shows the same root describing an increase in number.
harbeh: Much; many; abundantly.
הַרְבֵּה
This form carries the root’s sense of abundance beyond the imperative to multiply.
THE PATTERN
Life expresses abundance by bearing fruit and filling its living place.
And God blessed them, saying, "Bear fruit and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply upon the earth."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."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, saying, "Bear fruit and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply upon the earth."The Hebrew pair פְּרוּ וּרְבוּ (peru u-revu, “be fruitful and multiply”) appears in both verses. Genesis 1:22 speaks it over fish and birds; Genesis 9:7 addresses you with the same words, placing human abundance within that shared pattern of life.
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