God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
To be fruitful and multiply
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
פְּר֥וּ וּרְב֖וּ וּמִלְא֥וּ אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ וְכִבְשֻׁ֑הָ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לפרות ולרבות לכוין לקיום המין, והיא מצות פריה ורביה. והוא אמרו יתעלה ואתם פרו ורבו. וכבר בארו (ברכות ט"ו) שהחתן פטור מקריאת שמע כשישא בתולה מפני שהיא עסוק במצוה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בפרק ז' מיבמות. ומצוה זו אין הנשים חייבות בה. ובבאור אמרו (יבמות ס"ה:) האיש מצווה על פריה ורביה ולא האשה. (בראשית, נשים הלכות אישות פט"ו):
That is that He commanded us to be fruitful and multiply, with the intention of preserving the species. And that is the commandment of piryah verivyah. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "And you, be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 9:7). And they have already explained (Berakhot 16a) that a groom is exempt from the recitation of Shema on account of being busy with [this] commandment. And the laws of this commandment have already been explained in Chapter 7 of Yevamot. But women are not obligated in this commandment. And in the explanation, they said (Yevamot 65b), "A man is commanded to be fruitful and multiply, but not a woman." (See Parashat Bereishit; Mishneh Torah, Marriage 15.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a blessing formula
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Recorded as practiced today
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding
- Conservative Binding
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Position uncertain
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Genesis Rabbah 8:12 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.32-36 The catalog describes this reception as: rationalized ethical
Josephus
- Ant. 1.34 carried a parallel
The Church Fathers
- Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, Book 9 The catalog describes this reception as: literalized
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- atrahasis epic humans created to perform labor for the gods and relieve divine toil; population growth eventually becomes a divine nuisance checked by flood and plague — directly opposed to the biblical theology that reproduction is a divine blessing and mandate Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Tablet I–II (creation and flood accounts) Lambert and Millard, Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Oxford, 1969)
- enuma elish humanity created from the blood of the slain god Kingu to bear the toil of the gods; reproduction is instrumental and servile rather than a blessing tied to divine image Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast Tablet VI lines 1–38 Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (Eisenbrauns, 2013)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The commandment frames procreation as a religious-legal duty enforceable (in principle) by rabbinic courts compelling marriage; this conflicts with the modern normative principle that reproductive decisions belong exclusively to the individual, not to communal or religious authority.
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Article 17 (privacy)
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
ICCPR Article 17 protects individuals against arbitrary interference with their privacy, including decisions about family formation and reproduction; framing procreation as a binding legal obligation subject to court compulsion stands in substantive tension with this protected sphere of private autonomy.