Be Fruitful and Multiply

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Be Fruitful and Multiply In the creation account recorded in the first chapter of Genesis, we read that God specifically blessed the creatures of the sea and the birds of the air saying, “Be fruitful and multiply.” This divine blessing and command was repeated to Adam and Eve, and thus to all of mankind who alone are created to reflect the image and likeness of their Creator. We see in this account a threefold benediction – of life in the air, of life on the earth, and of life in the sea – a representation of the Trinitarian Source of all blessing, the Eternal Father who is in Heaven, the Son who walked the earth among us, and the Spirit who comes to us in the waters of baptism. It is not until the ninth chapter of Genesis that we first see man imparting benediction upon another in God’s name as Noah blesses his son, Shem. This means - at least insofar as the sacred writer records for our knowledge – that the blessing imparted by God to Adam and Eve along with the command to be fruitful and multiply was not in turn imparted upon another in His name, even though, created in His image and imbued with the power of dominion (from the Latin Dominus meaning Lord) they surely had the means to do so. Could it be that God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply” not only meant “to multiply physically,” but also in the case of mankind, “to be fruitful in multiplying my blessing” as befits one who is created to reflect the image of the God who blesses? Perhaps in their severely wounded and fallen state our first parents lost sight of this crucial element of God’s command; the command to multiply His blessing that it might propagate throughout the generations, a command that will loom especially large after the Fall as Divine Providence guides mankind toward restoration and ultimate perfection. So what became of humankind, deprived in a sense of the

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