What Does Genesis 9:7 Mean in the King James?
And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
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.
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, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.THE THREAD
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in 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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