Replenishing the Earth.
By Editor
“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.” Gen. i, 28. In this passage Spiritualists profess to find proof of a pre-Adamic race of men. They base their argument on the word “replenish,” which they tell us has the sense of filling again, showing that the earth had once been peopled, but the former race having, for some reason been destroyed, Adam and Eve received command to fill it again. They fall into this error through a mistranslation. The word, replenish, in the sense of filling again, does not convey the sense of the original, which contains no such idea. The Septuagint use the word πληρόω, which has no other meaning, according to Liddell and Scott, but to fill, make full, complete. The Hebrew word used, is mahlah, which occurs over two hundred times in the Old Testament, and is in almost every case rendered full, or filled, as in Psa. xlviii, 10: “Thy right hand is full of righteousness;” not that God’s hand had ever been empty of righteousness, and had to be filled again; but the word expresses the simple idea of fullness. Gesenius defines this word, “to fill, to make full,” and gives no other essential meaning; never, to fill again. Hence the instruction to Adam and Eve was, not to fill again, but simply to fill up, the earth, or give it its first race of inhabitants.—Ed.