And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
The flood has ended and the ark is empty. God now speaks the first words to a re-started human race: a blessing, and a command to fill the earth again. But the wording is not quite what Adam heard in Eden, and the difference tells us where mankind now stands.
A new world, opened with blessing
The earth has been cleared by water, and God now sets man in it on fresh terms.
Water has washed the earth clean. That gives a whole new set of conditions for people and animals. God now sets man in a new order of things. He blesses Noah and his sons, promising that they will be fruitful and will multiply to fill the earth, which had lost so many of its people.
That blessing does not come because the survivors were better than those who drowned. God had already said in His heart what man is, and He says the blessing anyway.
The new world, like the old, began its course with blessing from its Creator. "God blessed Noah." But first God gave a solemn witness. Before He spoke the blessing and the commands that came with it, He showed that the survivors of the flood were unchanged. They had the same nature as those whose sin had ruined them (Gen. 8:21). God had declared man completely corrupt before He judged the world by the flood. He says it again as the second father of the human family starts out. But now it was for mercy, not for judgment, that God spoke these words.
Fill the earth — all of it
The command is to spread out, and the emphasis falls on the whole globe.
Notice God's command to man as he entered the restored earth. It was to refill that earth — not parts of the earth, but the earth. He wanted men spread out across the world. He did not want them clustered together, relying on their own gathered strength. We will see in Gen. 11 how man ignored all this.
Man refused this command outright.
After the flood, His word to Noah and his sons was still, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth." But mankind, though awed by that judgment, had no desire to do His will. They wanted to stay together... their aim was to set themselves up as a universal republic without God.
The words God left out
God said almost the same words to Adam. But He added something for Adam that Noah never got.
"Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth," God had said to Adam. "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth," He also said to Noah and his sons. But to Adam He added what He did not add to Noah — "and subdue it." Was this omission accidental? To subdue the earth was God's original design for man on earth. By the fall he lost that place, and can never regain it. Another Man will do it — the Head of the new creation.
Blessed as a rescued man, not an innocent one
Noah gets more at the table than Adam did. He gets less authority. His standing is different.
He is "blessed," as Adam was in his day, and told to "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth." (Gen. 1:28; Gen. 9:1) ... God put the earth under Adam, and the creatures of the forest, the field, the sea and the air recognized him as their master... Now the creatures of the earth only stand in dread and fear of Noah... Yet Noah's table was better spread than Adam's had been at first... For Adam's was the food fitting an innocent one, Noah's is the food of a ransomed one.
The blessing carries a charge — and a failure
With the blessing comes a job: Noah is to hold the earth for God, not just enjoy it.
God commands him to fill the earth, as He had commanded Adam at the beginning. He is to order and govern it. He is to carry on his religious service and keep up his testimony to God in it. Government is his, and in company with priesthood too.
The failure comes at once.
The first thing Noah does after God had blessed him is to get drunk.
The one who holds it
So the blessing points past Noah to someone who will hold it without failing.
Here we see Christ, the true Noah, Heir of the new earth. Of that earth we read, "no longer will there be anything accursed." All things in it are handed over to Him.
Summary
- Mercy first. God gives His verdict on man's heart before the blessing, not after. So the blessing comes from mercy, not because man had improved.
- Blessing given. The new world opens just as the old one did — with the Creator's blessing on fruitfulness and increase.
- Reach commanded. The charge covers the whole earth, not parts of it. In Genesis 11 man refuses to scatter and stays gathered around himself.
- One word withheld. "Subdue it" is absent. Adam lost that place at the fall. One writer points ahead to another Man, the Head of the new creation, who will do it.
- Result foreshadowed. God blesses Noah as a ransomed man and gives him government. Noah fails almost at once. The blessing holds in the true Noah, Heir of a new earth where nothing is accursed.