Genesis 1:28
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.
God blessed the man and woman He had created male and female in His own image as the crowning work of His six-day making of heaven and earth, commanding them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and to subdue it and rule the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every living thing upon the earth. That dominion made Adam king under God with peaceful fearless fellowship with the animals, mastery of self, and the work of tilling and caring for the earth and developing its resources, a happy employment given before sin and not a curse. In the same beginning God Himself formed marriage and the family to raise up children and homes patterned after Eden and to spread abroad to occupy the earth, a sacred blessing to be entered with fitness of health, means, and duty lest it become a curse. When Adam rebelled that glory and kingship were lost, the lower creatures rebelled against his rule, and the dominion he held passed to his conqueror who claimed the world as his own. Through Christ as the second Adam, by paying the penalty of sin, humanity and its dominion are redeemed and fully restored when the earth is renewed and made the eternal home of holy happy beings living again in gentle fellowship with tame animals where nothing hurts nor destroys.
Words and Creation Setting
Genesis 1:28 belongs to God's six-day work of making heaven and earth which He finished and saw as very good, after which He ended His work and rested on the seventh day and blessed and sanctified it. The first week was measured off as the sample for every successive week to the close of time, giving man six days for labor and the seventh for rest in commemoration of the Creator's rest. Each day was a literal day in which God generated or produced some new portion of His work, and the weekly cycle of seven literal days originated in these first seven days and was preserved through Bible history.
The days of creation in which the verse stands are six literal days, not vast indefinite periods covering thousands or even millions of years adopted to accommodate the claim that millions of years were required for evolution of the earth from chaos. The world is now only about six thousand years old, not tens of thousands of years old, and God's day of rest was not another indefinite period. To make the days indefinite makes senseless and destroys the fourth commandment and frees men from its claims, for it charges God with commanding men to observe a week of seven literal days in commemoration of seven indefinite periods, which is unlike His dealings with mortals and impeaches His wisdom. The supposed conflict between science and revelation over the Mosaic record comes from inferences erroneously drawn from facts observed in nature, and interpretations of Scripture adopted to restore harmony undermine and destroy the force of the word of God, so that to hold the indefinite-period view while professing to believe the record of creation is infidelity in disguise and the worst kind of infidelity.
Bones of much larger men and animals, petrified wood, and instruments of warfare found in mountains and valleys are not proof of a race living long before this creation but remains of the large men, animals, and trees descended from this creation and living before the Flood. The Flood brought great changes to the earth and to the size of men, animals, and trees, and those who hold the indefinite-period view have limited ideas of that former size and change. Geology without Bible history proves nothing about time, for relics show a state of things different from the present but their time is learned only from the inspired record. Just how God accomplished creation in six literal days He has never revealed, and it is as incomprehensible as His existence, so that men err when they try to explain creation from natural causes or rest faith on geological suppositions against plain Scripture facts.
The verse is part of the plain Mosaic record given as inspired history and sufficient evidence for faith, showing God as the living maker of the heavens and the earth whom the fourth commandment defines. It was preserved in its purity through the ages by the divine Mind and Hand as the authentic account of the creation of the world. It belongs to the most ancient and most comprehensive history men possess, coming fresh from the Fountain of eternal truth, lighting up the far-distant past where human research cannot penetrate, showing the power that laid the foundations of the earth and stretched out the heavens, giving the only authentic account of the origin of nations and the only history of nations and the race unsullied by human pride or prejudice. It is a pillar of the Christian faith and one of the Bible's most important truths, handed down at cost of suffering and blood to be accepted with implicit confidence as the guide of life. To cavil at it, spiritualize it, and explain it away as proof of superior wisdom, talent, learning and independence is infidelity now prevailing to an alarming extent not in the world merely but in the church, where a large share of the professedly Christian world practically rejects it either wholly or in part, and it stands against human reasoning and the suppositions of geologists, so that it is inconsistent to reject the revealed prophecies of Daniel and Revelation as too obscure to understand while accepting mere suppositions about what God has not revealed concerning creation.
It is to be the chief study in schools to carry heart and mind higher than now thought possible by daily supplies from the fountain of eternal truth and to preserve purity of heart and mind. Studied there it trains the mind to comprehend the important truths that concern eternal life instead of being dwarfed by commonplace trivial matters, and brings converse with patriarchs and prophets. It shows what redemption cost the One who was equal with the Father from the beginning and sacrificed His life that a people might stand before Him redeemed from every common, earthly thing and renewed in the image of God, so that education is a failure unless the understanding grasps its truths of divine revelation and the heart accepts the teachings of the gospel of Christ.
The creation in the verse is the mighty work of the Father united with the Son, with Christ present as Commander in the heavenly courts. Before Satan fell the Father consulted the Son in purposing to make this world and create beasts and living things upon it and to make man in the image of God to reign as a ruling monarch over every living thing God created. When Satan learned this purpose he was envious of Christ and jealous because the Father had not consulted him about the creation of man. Under the supervision of God, Adam was thus appointed to be monarch of the world, with man created in God's own image, male and female, blessed and charged to 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 moves upon the earth.
The earth given for man to inhabit and subdue came forth from the Creator's hand exceedingly beautiful, like a noble palace, with pure and healthful air. It was not one extensive plain but was diversified with hills and mountains and plains, with rivers and other bodies of water regularly dispersed. The hills and mountains were not high and ragged as they now are but regular and beautiful in shape, with no bare high rocks seen upon them, the rocks lying beneath the surface as bones to the earth. The hills, mountains, and beautiful plains were adorned with plants and flowers and tall, majestic trees of every description, many times larger and much more beautiful than trees now are, and angels beheld the wonderful and beautiful works of God and rejoiced.
The creative energy that called the world into existence is in the Word of God, who spoke and His words created His works, and that Word imparts power and begets life. Creation is a reservoir of means made ready for Him to employ instantly to do His pleasure, in which nothing is useless, though the curse has caused tares to be sown by the enemy. Every command in the Word is a promise that, accepted by the will and received into the soul, brings with it the life of the Infinite One, transforms the nature, and recreates the soul in the image of God. The life thus imparted is sustained in the same way, by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, so that rational beings alone should not cause confusion in the world but should live to God and honor Him, for God and Saviour is all-wise and all-sufficient and came to this world that His perfection might be revealed in humans.
Humanity in God's Image
Genesis 1:28 shows man as God's last crowning work, created male and female in God's own image with a personal form like God's own personality, proving that God has a real personality as truly as the humans He created. Human beings were made as a distinct order watched with deep and joyful interest by all heaven, designed to populate the earth in close communion with heaven, receiving and assimilating power from God as the great Source of power and upheld by Him to live sinless lives. God blessed them and gave them dominion over the things He had created, commanding them to 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 moves upon the earth.
The blessing included intelligence such as God gave to no other creature, and being made in the divine image enabled man to contemplate and appreciate the glorious works of God in nature. In Eden Adam stood in noble perfection with mind closely joined to a sound body, walking and talking with God and communing face to face with His Son and with holy angels as companion of the highest order of intelligences. Adam was crowned king in Eden and made the rightful sovereign over all the works of God's hands, with dominion over every living thing God had created.
Man came from the Creator's hand perfect and beautiful in form, perfect in every faculty, in perfect soundness and therefore in perfect health, filled with vital force and possessing the vigor and glory of the first generations. The first Adam was made after God's own character, pure and upright, with no corrupt principles and no corrupt propensities or tendencies to evil, as faultless as the angels before God's throne. His fall did not come from indwelling sin, and why a pure faultless being fell is inexplainable now but will be made plain when we see as we are seen and know as we are known.
The original vitality was so great that the blessing first gave a race living nearly a thousand years from Adam to the Flood, with size and physical strength in proportion to length of life, as seen in Noah living nine hundred and fifty years. It was more than a thousand years before corrupt appetites and passions and general violations of physical law were sensibly felt upon the race. Flesh eating after the Flood, together with the original curse, accumulated transgression, indulgence of appetite and lustful passion, and violation of physical and natural law, has bowed down and dwindled man to brief feeble existence with sickness, suffering, debility, disease, decrepitude, imbecility, and premature death.
Adam was established as head of the earthly family under God, charged to uphold the principles of heaven's family for peace and happiness. The dominion is not self-rule or self-centered power, for humanity was to live under God and not make itself the center. Adam's sin rejected that God-given order, and self-interest displaced love.
Man was created by the Father united with the Son in a first estate of perfection, uprightness, and innocency of great worth, but the divine Son is of far greater value by noble spotless character and exalted office. After transgression fallen sinful man is an imperfect offering of less value than Adam before his fall and cannot atone for man. Only a sacrifice superior in value to man in his state of perfection and innocency can ransom him, and through His own divine perfection of character Christ alone can atone for sin, elevate fallen man, and bring him back to his first estate.
Dominion Over Living Creatures
Adam was crowned king in Eden and appointed monarch and rightful sovereign over all works under divine supervision, with he and his companion given unlimited control and rule over the earth and over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. That dominion was to be borne while remaining true to God. In Eden it meant very happy, peaceful, harmless fellowship without fear, with lions and lambs sporting peacefully around Adam and Eve or lying down together and sleeping at their feet, and with happy birds of every color and plumage flitting among trees and flowers and around them. Their home was full of tokens of love from the Father and the Son, where bright-plumed songbirds delighted them with sweet music, and human voices united with them in harmonious glad songs of love, praise, thanksgiving and adoration to the Father and Son and Creator, while continually discovered new beauty and additional glory filled hearts with deeper love, gratitude and reverence. They recognized infinite wisdom and knowledge in the order and harmony of creation.
All nature acknowledged that rule and remained in subjection so long as man remained loyal and true to God. When he transgressed and rebelled against divine law that dominion was forfeited, the inferior creatures rebelled against his rule, and the spirit of rebellion he admitted spread throughout the animal creation. The changed state of beasts, trees, grass and air continually reminds man of his lost dominion and teaches the sad lesson of evil, witnessing in mercy to the character and results of rebellion against God, to the sacredness of His law, and to the danger of setting it aside even in the slightest degree.
To subdue the earth and have dominion means to bring it under human culture by occupying the soil for human uses, tilling and improving it, developing its resources and condition, and making settlements. As man does this, animals whose end is to devour give way and pass away, needing domestication and special care to preserve their existence or becoming extinct where man settles, as the wolf, cougar, lion and tiger have. Low scavenger animals were not designed as staple food for the higher image-bearer of higher organization, but were left where placed to dispose of filthy putrescent matter and to subserve human existence outside the alimental department.
Dominion joins human rule with mercy toward animals and with the wholesome and delicious plant food given in the beginning, for animals were placed under dominion as creatures to be treated with tenderness and mercy, not killed so their flesh can be eaten as a luxury. Meat eating breaks that trust because it involves cruelty that destroys tenderness in those who inflict it and those who behold it and injures mind and soul through the body, and returning to the original food and practicing and teaching mercy avoids that harmful effect on soul and body and fits those seeking to become pure, refined and holy for companionship of heavenly angels. Animals see and hear and love and fear and suffer, display intelligence closely approaching human intelligence, use their organs more faithfully than many human beings, manifest sympathy and tenderness toward companions in suffering, show affection for those in charge of them superior to that shown by some of the human race, and form attachments not broken without great suffering, so that no human heart that has cared for domestic animals can look into their confident affectionate eyes and willingly give them over to the butcher's knife to devour their flesh as a sweet morsel. Dominion is therefore humane, compassionate, Christlike stewardship exercised in personal useful physical labor in cultivating land and raising food, not the perversion that makes any class lords excused from work who despise manual labor as degrading drudgery, live in cities by scheming, and enslave another race for toil to produce laziness, extravagance and every evil, whereas patient joyous labor brings health to mental, moral and physical powers, frees the dependent from bondage for food and work, and is the highest missionary work.
The kingship given to human beings includes dominion and mastery of themselves. That kingship and self-mastery was lost. The grace of God restores the lost kingship, giving mastery of self, and this saving power of the gospel is revealed in Christlike lives of self-control as the practical demonstration the world needs.
Loss and Restoration of Dominion
Genesis 1:28 sets man in Eden as a sovereign in original exalted purity, with a golden character and noble perfection in God's image, covered as with a garment by a halo of God's glory and given health and plenitude of blessings with dominion. After transgression that covering glory departed because God's light cannot cover disobedience and sin, the noble perfection and glory were lost and the character was dimmed, and the sovereign of Eden became a slave on earth groaning under the curse of sin. By Christ's first advent poverty, sickness, and suffering of every kind had become the portion of Adam's children, with sickness, poverty, and suffering replacing health and blessing.
At creation Adam was made monarch of the world and placed in dominion over the earth God had made and over its living creatures. When Adam yielded to temptation he was overcome and brought into bondage under the power of the deceiver, and the dominion he held passed to his conqueror. By conquering Adam Satan usurped the earth itself as man's dominion, claiming the world God had made as his own dominion, the race as his subjects, and Eden as his headquarters where he would establish his throne and be monarch of the world, becoming the god of this world and asserting that humanity had chosen him as sovereign.
That dominion passed to Satan when he led humanity into disobedience, and by sin not only man but the earth came under the power of the wicked one. Through the sacrifice of Christ in the plan of salvation, Christ as the second Adam and loyal Son of man came to pay sin's penalty, redeem humanity, expose Satan's claim as false, and recover what the first Adam forfeited. Not only man but his dominion is to be redeemed, so that all who seek deliverance from Satan's power can be set free.
All that was lost by the first Adam will be restored by the second, and all that was lost by sin is restored by the great plan of redemption. God's original purpose in creation was to give the earth to man as his kingdom and dominion and to make the earth the abode and home of holy, happy beings, and that purpose will be fulfilled. That kingdom was betrayed by man into the hands of Satan and long held by the mighty foe, but when God renews the earth by His power and frees it from sin, sorrow, and curse, there is no more curse and the earth is made the eternal abode and eternal home of the redeemed who inherit the land and dwell therein forever.
The kingship and sway over the lower order of beings given in Genesis 1:26-28 was lost and will be restored in God's holy mountain, where the lower creatures will again recognize man's rule, the fierce becoming gentle and the timid trustful, so nothing shall hurt nor destroy. The first dominion of man over the earth and over every living thing is restored in the new earth, with peaceful rule over the lower creation again given to the redeemed. There they live in close, gentle fellowship with tame animals amid streams, fields, trees, and pastoral beauty, with the holy city in the distance, in unfading harmony between humanity, nature, and God.
Marriage, Family and Settlement
God Himself formed marriage in Eden in the beginning, at the same time the Sabbath law was given to man. He bestowed on man two great gifts, woman as a helpmeet and the Sabbath as a day of rest, and ordained that woman should be united with man in holy wedlock. Marriage thus received Christ's sanction and blessing as a sacred institution, to be kept pure and undefiled in purity and holiness, truth and righteousness. It was given to raise up families crowned with honor as symbols of the family in heaven, and as one of the greatest blessings ever given to the human family. Christ who sanctioned marriage in Eden gave it His decided sanction again at the beginning of His public ministry by His presence and first miracle at the marriage festival, witnessing that He will not refuse His presence on marriage occasions and that marriage is not forbidden by God.
Marriage was designed by Heaven to be a blessing to man and includes the increase of families, but that increase is governed by responsibility. The command to have children is not fulfilled by mutual love alone, but requires physical strength, mental energy, means to provide, a just sense of the duty of husband and father, and propriety in the increase of the family. Those who marry must consider whether their offspring will possess physical health and mental and moral strength, acting from high motives with the knowledge that society has claims upon them and that the weight of their family's influence will tell in the upward or downward scale. To marry in haste without these qualifications and without such consideration abuses the institution and turns the blessing into a dreadful curse. God Himself established the family relations, and because He is the Creator of children He understands all their needs better than any other, and because He bought them with His own blood He feels a deeper interest in their welfare than any other.
His word is the only safe guide in the management of children, and human philosophy has not discovered more than God knows or devised a wiser plan for dealing with children than He has given. If His word were carefully studied and faithfully obeyed, there would be less soul-anguish over the perverse conduct of wicked children. The command to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it expresses God's design for humanity as a distinct order made in God's image to populate the earth in close communion with heaven, upheld by God as the source of power to live without sin. First given to Adam, that direction to disperse throughout the earth to replenish and subdue it remained God's design after the Flood.
Deciding at Babel to remain united in one place and establish a kingdom over the whole earth disobeyed that direction. They purposed to build a city with a stupendous tower to prevent scattering abroad in colonies and to keep the community united in one body, replacing worldwide settlement with a centralized metropolis as the seat of a universal empire for human glory. Adam and Eve's children were to go forth and occupy the earth with homes patterned after the first home. That first home, beautified by the hand of God Himself, was a garden, not a gorgeous palace built by human pride, with the blue heavens for its dome, the earth with flowers and living green for its floor, and leafy trees for its canopy. It teaches for all time that true happiness is found not in indulgence of pride and luxury but in communion with God through His created works, and that by giving less attention to the artificial and cultivating greater simplicity men come nearer to answering the purpose of God in their creation.
Labor, Land and Country Life
Physical exercise and activity were part of God's original provision in the beginning through the work of subduing the earth and having dominion over its living creatures, with mankind to multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and exercise rule over fish, birds, and every moving thing. That plan joined equal use of mental and physical powers, combining physical labor in cultivating and caring for the earth with exercise of the mind in study.
God did not design men to live in idleness but gave work from the beginning, giving employment as soon as Adam was created. Though Adam was created a gentleman and lord over a rich domain, rich in all the Owner of the universe could supply and possessing Eden, he was not to be idle. Every want was supplied by fruit-bearing trees of every variety for usefulness and beauty and by lovely unfading flowers, yet even with such wealth and dominion he could not be happy without work, so God gave him something to do in his place, to tend and dress the garden and the things God had created, finding employment and happiness in it, with his wants abundantly supplied in response to his labor from the fruits of Eden. That original calling to responsibility for the earth and its living creatures included useful work in caring for the garden.
Work in the garden brought happiness while the garden supplied needs, and work was not a curse or a sign of low status. After disobedience labor became toil and hardship, yet it still serves God's purpose by helping restrain evil and temptation and by developing industry, purity, and firmness.
The requirement to subdue the land by tilling, clearing, cultivating it, and raising food through personal useful physical labor still rests on all mankind and on God's people. Land left uncultivated after a disappointing first trial must be worked with faith and perseverance that overcome serious obstacles, with most diligent, thorough, earnest labor, for prayer for God's blessing does not replace effort but must be seconded by it. Neglect through idleness and slack, slipshod cultivation leaves land unfruitful and gives the false impression that the soil is too poor to yield a good crop, whereas diligent faithful clearing and thorough working, with God's blessing, produces excellent fruit and a good harvest in return for effort put forth. Crowded families in large cities should take up this God-given work by coming to country places and putting forth their energies in subduing and cultivating the earth instead of spending time in idleness and objectionable amusements that benefit neither themselves nor others. Dominion is humane, compassionate, Christlike stewardship and does not make any class lords of creation excused from work who may despise manual labor as degrading drudgery, live in cities by scheming, and make another race slaves to do their toil, a perversion producing laziness, extravagance, and every evil, whereas true gentlemanliness is patient joyous labor bringing health to mental, moral, and physical powers, freeing the dependent from bondage to others for food and work, and serving as the highest and most abiding missionary work to God and fellow men.
God made the world in six days when He could have spoken it into existence in one day, working deliberately rather than in rush and hurry. He does not lead people to work day and night until strength breaks down, but teaches regular hours for work and sleep, stopping when nature says stop, and preserving health and strength instead of exhausting them by overwork.
God's original plan, purpose, and order was for people to live spread out in the quiet of the country in a garden amid the beautiful sights and attractive sounds of nature, with good air, plenty of room, and ground for cultivation, not crowded together in cities huddled in terraces and tenements. He placed Adam and Eve in those natural surroundings and made man perfectly happy in Eden to rejoice in them as an emblem of heaven and the love of God, delighting in lovely fragrant flowers, trees bearing precious fruits for man's use, fruit trees, and birds caroling songs of praise in untainted purity, and He still desires men today to rejoice in those same sights and sounds. Coming into harmony with that original garden plan gives the most favorable position for securing, recovering, and preserving health of body, mind, and soul, while city life with liability to disease, foul air, impure water, impure food, and crowded dark unhealthful dwellings is contrary to God's purpose and a peril to health. Sin marred that purpose and brought the want and suffering, care and anguish found in large cities that rend hearts, but God has not abandoned the earth, the image of God is to be impressed once more upon souls with the peace of heaven, and to locate sanitariums and educational and medical work amid the scenes of nature is to follow His order, with the more closely His order followed the more wonderfully He will work to restore suffering humanity. God created mankind for happiness and to be a joyful people reposing in His goodness, mercy, and love, not to be kept in continual worry, while sinners are converted to Him.
In the beginning Adam and Eve lived simple in habits and in harmony with nature's laws, and under that order there was abundant supply for the needs of the human family, with fewer imaginary wants and more opportunities to work in God's ways. Selfishness and indulgence of unnatural taste perverted God's natural provisions and brought sin and misery with excess on one hand and want on the other. Christ's tender care for the common needs of life gives assurance of God's original provision, pledging that need shall be supplied even when fare is plain and even scanty and the lot is shut in by poverty, and promising what is far better than worldly luxuries and gratification of appetite, the abiding comfort of His own presence.
The great work of creation belongs to what is to be told to children on the Sabbath, especially when parents walk with them in fields and groves in pleasant weather, as the reason for the institution of the Sabbath. It shows the earth as it came from God's hand holy and beautiful, with every flower, shrub, and tree answering the purpose of its Creator, everything lovely and filling the mind with thoughts of the love of God, and every sound music in harmony with the voice of God. Sin marred that perfect work, and thorns and thistles, sorrow and pain and death are all the result of disobedience to God. Yet the earth though marred with the curse of sin still reveals God's goodness, with green fields, lofty trees, glad sunshine, clouds, dew, night stillness, starry heavens and moon bearing witness of the Creator, and every drop of rain and ray of light testifying to His forbearance and love.