Genesis 9:1

1 God blessed Noach and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth.

Genesis 9:1 Meaning and Commentary

Genesis 9:1

And God blessed Noah and his sons
With temporal blessings, not spiritual ones; for though some of them were blessed with such, yet not all, particularly Ham:

and said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the
earth;
depopulated by the flood: this is a renewal of the blessing on Adam, a power and faculty of propagating his species, which was as necessary now as then, since there were so few of the human race left in the world; and the renewal of this grant was the rather necessary, if, as has been observed, Noah and his sons were restrained from cohabiting with their wives while in the ark: but though these words are not an express command for the propagation of their species, yet more than a bare permission, at least they are a direction and instruction to it, and even carry in them a promise of fruitfulness, that they should multiply and increase, which was very needful at this time.

Genesis 9:1 In-Context

1 God blessed Noach and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth.

2 The fear and dread of you will be upon every wild animal, every bird in the air, every creature populating the ground, and all the fish in the sea; they have been handed over to you.

3 Every moving thing that lives will be food for you; just as I gave you green plants before, so now I give you everything -

4 only flesh with its life, which is its blood, you are not to eat.

5 I will certainly demand an accounting for the blood of your lives: I will demand it from every animal and from every human being. I will demand from every human being an accounting for the life of his fellow human being.