Here is an interesting idea: what is the first command God gave mankind?  Better yet, what is the first command in the Bible? If you go specifically by imperative mood (morphologically-indicated) you have the first instance in Genesis 1:22. This is the first imperative recorded in Scripture, but it is not to humans. Humans are given the same instructions in Genesis 1:28, with something extra not given the animals.

A Little Devotional Grammar

If you read Genesis 1 prior to the first imperative, however, you will notice that God is issuing verbal commands from the start. The difference is grammar (jussives vs. imperatives), and that difference is not one of force or intention but the object being commanded. Jussives are third person, while imperatives are second person. When He commands that light exist (v3), the report is in the jussive mood. When He commands the animals to populate the planet, imperatives are in order. So what? Well, both ways of writing are expressing the will of the speaker.

That is the heart of a command: it tells you not necessarily what will happen but what the speaker wants to happen. My little two-year-old son likes to issue commands–to his playmates, to us, even to inanimate objects. He has yet to see things go his way, especially when he commands his parents. But he is expressing his will, his preference, and it gets pretty comical. He gets frustrated about the inanimate objects sometimes.

The point of the absurd illustration of a child issuing imperatives to inanimate objects and his parents is to make the ultimate distinction. God, when He expresses His will, can get what He wants every time. “Lights on.” The first revelation we have of our God, Genesis 1, is that He is the Creator. And that statement has profound content: The Creator’s power is awesome, and everything He does is good. The Lord’s disciples marveled at the power of Jesus’ word, that he could command the raging sea to be still (Matthew 8:27, Mark 4:41). They were face-to-face with their Creator in the flesh.

The Command

God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”  (Genesis 1:28, NAS)

In Hebrew, we find five commands in this one verse:

1.    be fruitful: פְּר֥וּ (PARAH)

2.     multiply: וּרְב֛וּ (RABAH)

3.    fill the earth: וּמִלְא֥וּ אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ (MAL-EY HA ARETZ)

4.    subdue it: וְכִבְשֻׁ֑הָ (CABASH!)

5.    rule: וּרְד֞וּ (RADAH)

Verse 28 is complicated (5 imperatives), and the two major things being commanded are often divided, depending on the reader’s preferences, theological bent, sociological axe-to-grind, etc. I propose holding verse 28 as a unity, a complex of blessing and commands that are all part of the same package. One blessing, two basic commands, all interrelated.

First “Be fruitful” is agricultural, as the English word suggests to us, and it means to reproduce yourself abundantly, like fruit trees with their hundreds of seed-bearing fruits every season. “Multiply” adds another level of intensity in the same direction. “Fill the earth” gives you the goal towards which this command complex is moving. This command, the first, stands in stark contrast to the so-called “Green Movement,” which, with its neo-eugenicist bias would rather see less than more human beings on the planet. Don’t believe the talking heads who claim to have counted all the beans and found the earth wanting of resources for human populations. God told us to fill the earth.

The second command complex has been called the “Dominion Mandate,” where God delegated the rule of Planet Earth to man. I believe that vv26-27 is most clearly explained by this delegation in v28 to “subdue and rule.” That is, our being God’s image is about our function as His delegated rulers, with form (our design as material/immaterial/higher-functioning beings) following function. There can be no higher earthly creation than God’s Image.

A Vital Correlation

Those who get excited about having babies but fail to recognize the dominion mandate are missing the point. Those who get the dominion part but fail to see God’s reproductive mechanism for doing it are also missing something in the context. We were told to fill the earth so that we could rule it. Now, after the Fall, we have an earth under the curse of sin being filled by sinful, fallen humans who bear the broken image of God (Romans 8:18-21).

God has been working through this broken picture of human history since the Fall to effect that for which He designed the human race and the earth. This is the Bible’s presentation of human history, and in Christ the Last Adam, the King of Kings, we will one day see earth finally and perfectly subdued and ruled in submission to our kind and loving Creator.

If Jesus and His Kingdom is God’s eternal answer to Adam’s Fall and “Paradise Lost,” then what are we now to think of the mandates to Fill and Subdue? The obvious answer is about Eternity and the impact of our choices here and now on the eternal state. We will not procreate in the age to come (Lk 20:34-36). Yet the Church will rule with Christ in His Kingdom (Rev 20:6). We are begetting and training children ultimately to participate in this Eternal dominion “to the glory of the Father.”

Notice that this understanding of human history and our role in it does not spiritualize the Text so that our choices here and now are somehow disconnected from the Kingdom. All the contingency, all the conditions placed on believers, all the warnings for believers we find in the New Testament (like Romans 8:17) are anticipating this dominion for which we were created. How you “subdue” here and now has a great impact on your standing to do so then. The children God gives us so that we will train them to know and fear Him have an eternal destiny, partaking in the Kingdom.

Filling and Subduing Applied

It should be no surprise to us that God has a pattern for how we should conduct ourselves: filling the earth through procreation and subduing it. When we see a breakdown in this pattern, we can rejoice at least that the Word has been vindicated. Bad things happen when you disregard the “Good Book.” In Europe, which is largely post-Christian today, we see a major transformation of the cultural and religious landscape. In less than a generation, several key European countries will be Muslim.

How can the West cease to be the West? People tend first to give up on the Bible, and then their lifestyle follows suit. So having children is not as important in European civilization as living the socialistic good life. Consequence: Western Civilization is about to be banished from Europe not through military conquest but through active procreation by anti-Westerners. In short, Muslims are out-reproducing the West. How did this happen? It was a subtle shifting in priorities from God’s interests to man’s by those who had the answers and forsook them.

God help the United States! We’re not far behind, in terms of birthrate. For a succinct explanation of this trend in the West, I recommend Herb Meyer’s short documentary The Siege of Western Civilization.

Four Thoughts

1. Bibliology (The Bible): The first instance of something in the Bible is foundational to our understanding of that thing in the rest of the Bible. Man’s charter responsibility is world dominion, which requires procreation, in submission to our Creator. This is man’s destiny, by Divine fiat.

2. Theology Proper:  The first command from God to man begins with a blessing.  His commands are always for our best.

3. Theology Proper: The difference between man and God is easy to see, if you look to the Text. He commands existence out of nonexistence. We do not. He knows all the knowable. We do not. He has always existed and will always exist. Not so mankind, though all people will perpetually exist.  He is not only good, He is the Source of all that his good. We are not.

4. Eschatology (Last Things): Our life is not about the present as much as the future. You have to live and function in the present, but keep your eye on the goal towards which God is taking all of history. Our priorities are never more in-tune with God’s priorities than when we live here and now in the biblical light of eternity.

Passage to Pray

Genesis 1

Memory Verse: Genesis 1:26-28

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26–28, NAS)

Post Script

If you would like a resource on the Biblical view of the “Green Movement,” you might check out the Cornwall Alliance’s recent production Resisting the Green Dragon.