Anonymous Asks (377)

“What does the command to ‘fill the earth and subdue it’ entail?”

Today’s question is a reference to Genesis 1:28, in which God told our distant ancestors, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” He gave Noah and his sons a similar mandate after the flood: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered.”

An Environment, Not an End

The Lord did not use the word “subdue” the second time around, but the concept is right there in the reference to the fear and dread of animals and birds, presumably because most men would now be consuming them for food, abandoning the vegetarian diet introduced in Eden. In any case, fallen or unfallen, the divine plan for this world was always for man to be (at least nominally) in charge.

What seems obvious to anyone reading and believing these words is that God created the natural world for man, not man for the world. Sure, he created the heavens and the earth first, but man was the crowning achievement of God’s creation. It is logical for us to exercise our God-given dominion over the world responsibly and sustainably, avoiding turning our environment into a dump, but we cannot get away from the fact that a world operating according to the laws of nature in the absence of human authority and stewardship would not serve the purpose for which God created it.

The planet is man’s environment, not an end in itself. We do not serve it; it serves us, or at least it ought to. That’s what “dominion” implies.

Subduing the Earth

What does that entail? Well, it’s a reasonable question. With great power comes great responsibility, as someone wise once said. Let’s start with subduing. The Hebrew word translated “subdue” simply means to dominate or exercise control over. In the first instance, man was unfallen, and fear and dread were not part of the package. Subduing the earth certainly entailed using animals for the our benefit, which happened naturally over time as man realized oxen could pull plows or carts much better than we can, that horses and donkeys could be saddled and ridden to speed up travel, and that dairy products of various types are delicious and nutritious. Later, “every moving thing” was given to man for food. This too is a form of subduing.

When I think about subduing the natural world, gardening pops into my mind. You may find fruit to eat in a jungle, but a jungle and a garden are two very different things. Adam was the first gardener. In addition to farming, subduing the earth would eventually include hunting, landscaping, mining, damming rivers, cutting lumber, building roads and houses, learning to traverse natural barriers and every other way in which we tailor our environment to serve specific needs. In time, man would even learn to fly.

Tyranny or Benevolence

In all these ways, men have called the shots in the natural world. All in some measure fulfill our mandate. Sadly, because we are fallen, we have not always exercised our authority in the wisest, kindest and most effective ways.

Exercising dominion can be tyrannical or benevolent. I prefer the latter approach, and I believe the Lord does too. We could cite Proverbs 12:10 and 27:23, Matthew 6:26 and 10:29, Jonah 4:11 and many others. Scripture provides a plethora of evidence God cares for all his creatures, and those who love God ought to do so as well. We may use animals for our benefit, but we ought to provide corresponding benefits to them. That’s a moral way to behave, but it also produces great rewards, as those who love animals and enjoy their company will attest.

The Lord’s care for the earth he created is also evident in the Law of Moses. Israel was not to simply exploit the land God gave them until it became worn out and useless for the purpose, but to allow their fields and pastures a rest every seven years. That’s a lesson wise men take to heart and may apply in other ways. We cut down trees, but we also plant them.

Filling the Earth

There is another Hebrew word in the original mandate that the ESV translates “fill” and many people associate with populating the planet. I believe that is a correct understanding of the word. The KJV and a few other outliers substitute the word “replenish”, which I’m sure appeals to Christians with an environmental bent, but the word “fill” is in most translations because it seems to be a more accurate understanding of the underlying Hebrew. Even in the KJV the word is rendered that way the overwhelming majority of the time. Of course replenishing the earth is a prudent way to proceed, but I don’t think it’s explicit in Genesis.

It should also be evident that the command to fill the earth is not merely a restatement of “be fruitful and multiply”. Mankind could certainly increase greatly in numbers while occupying only a fraction of the world’s livable surface. But if indeed this world was created to serve humanity’s needs, and not the other way round, then it makes sense that we explore, cultivate and eventually populate it all rather than just part of it. The Lord put no restriction on human exploration of our world, his mandate implies it, and the multiplication of numbers at some point requires it. So go ahead, have kids, spread out and enjoy all that God created.

Filling and Overpopulation

It is probably only with the advent of the evolutionary worldview that men started to worry about restricting our numbers rather than increasing them. Secular environmentalists have been fussing about “overpopulation” my entire life, and there are certainly places in the world where people have gathered in numbers so overwhelming that it began to make life unpleasant, dirty and short. There is an obvious remedy for overwhelming population density if we would simply take it, and it’s evident any time you look out the window of a low-flying airplane in Canada: in some parts of this world, the vast majority of the environment remains uncultivated and underpopulated. Moreover, our current problems in the West have far more to do with our selfish failure to maintain replacement birthrates and our unwise immigration policies than they do with overpopulation.

But no, God did not simply send Noah and his sons out into a fallen world to repopulate it endlessly until the planet groaned under the weight of its occupants. With the completion of revelation, it is also evident that the Lord has written an ending to human history as well as a beginning, and that ending will permanently resolve any overpopulation problem that may eventually develop. Scripture doesn’t address the issue of overpopulation at all. For that reason, it does not trouble me.