The commandment “be fruitful and multiply” and its meaning [↑]
The commandment to produce offspring - “pru u-rvu”, that is, “be fruitful and multiply” - according to the Pentateuch, was given to the First man, Adam, after he and his wife Chava (Eve) were created on the sixth day of Creation: “And G‑d blessed them, and G‑d said to them: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth...” (Bereishit 1:28
).
Jewish sages pointed out the extremely important significance of this commandment. The Talmud says that one who refuses to fulfill it is as if shedding blood, and such “evasion” leads to the expulsion of the Divinity
, G‑dly presence
(Yevamot 63a
).
The Talmud treatise Shabbat (Shabbat 31
) also says that when a person after death appears before the Heavenly Court, one of the first questions he is asked is whether he fulfilled the commandment “be fruitful and multiply” (Shabbat 31).
At the same time, it is important to “practice”, to make every effort for this, and whether a person is awarded offspring or not is in the hands of the Almighty.
The Lord started with a family, He created a beautiful couple and called them man.
“Male and female he created them, and blessed them, and called their name man on the day of their creation.” Genesis 5:2
He gave the first man the wonderful Garden of Eden, to which He Himself came to have communication with His creation in the cool of the day... Man did not live up to the Creator’s intentions, did it his own way, disobeyed God and sin entered people’s lives... The Just God deprived people of earthly paradise, so that we learn to strive for eternal paradise, which can only be achieved through faith and obedience to the Lord.
Man means one whole, united and indivisible. One life in which the man is in a leadership position, and the wife is in a subordinate position. This single spiritual life cannot be separated, divided, cut, because the spirit is indivisible. The Lord breathed it into us:
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being” Genesis 2:7
Only God can take the spirit from the body (death), but the spirit does not die, the body is subject to decay. God can take one of the spouses and then the remaining one has the opportunity to remarry with a similar, widowed single partner, and only by the will of our Lord.
But people don’t care! I want to live in marriage, but if I don’t like it, I’ll get divorced and start looking for new grooms or brides. This is an absurdity from which children suffer, and even the authors of polygamy (polygamy) themselves hardly experience joy from their “exploits.”
Christian TV and social networks on the Internet are discussing the “problem” of how many children there should be in a Christian family. “Experts” argue that the process should be under the control of the “planned economy” of the spouses. The smartest polemicists believe that a family can give life, education, success and love to two or three children, that is, within reason. Modern people consider a large family to be “madness” in our difficult times, when there are problems with finances, living space and a shortage of kindergartens . All these “arguments” come from Satan because they contradict God’s plan.
Why does marriage only exist on earth? The Sadducees had no faith in eternal life, nor in the resurrection, nor in angels; they tried to “divorce” Jesus on a difficult issue:
“That day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him and asked Him: Teacher! Moses said: If a man dies without having children, let his brother take his wife for himself and restore seed to his brother; We had seven brothers; the first, having married, died and, having no children, left his wife to his brother; likewise the second and the third, even to the seventh; after all, the wife also died; So, in the resurrection, which of the seven will she be the wife of? for everyone had it. Jesus answered and said to them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God; for in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but remain as the angels of God in heaven.” Matthew 22:23-30 “Being fruitful and multiplying” is the privilege of the family. This will not happen in eternity. Whoever of us has faith in God will unquestioningly fulfill the will of the Heavenly Father! Why did God remove these brothers from the earth one by one? Why did He grant a woman to continue to wait for offspring from a family that, apart from an external religious form, essentially did nothing? Because the meaning of marriage is children! As much as the Lord can give! And not the amount that we, loved ones, “plan.”
“However, a woman will be saved through bearing children if she continues in faith and love and holiness with self-control.” 1 Timothy 2:15
Today only Muslims strictly fulfill the commandment. Soon they will cover the entire earth, as is already happening in Europe. Where are the Christians? Maybe they don’t know the words of the Lord? Or have their churches never preached on this topic? For arrogant humanity, the law is not written, and God will not deprive us of this stupid resistance to His will. We only lose by resisting the Spirit of God and living according to human lethal logic.
In the unique human body, all organs and systems (note that we did not create them) work like a clock. From birth, our hearts pump blood, providing all organs and cells with the essentials, providing nutrition and removing waste. The liver, stomach, kidneys, brain and everything in us, from birth in this world, works tirelessly and clearly. And the reproductive organs are just getting ready to start, puberty begins, and then after 20-25 years, their function will gradually fade away, and our lives will continue...
Each organ in the human body does its job according to the plan given by God. The stomach receives and digests food, supplying the body with everything it needs; the liver, as a unique chemical laboratory, cleanses and enriches the blood; the reproductive organs secrete the seed, fertilize it and bear the developing human embryo. Can we not give food to the stomach? But offer him to work once a week and let him work idle the rest of the time? Or tell the heart to pump blood only twice a month. Absurd!
And let our reproductive organs, as in the time of Onan, not receive seed and bear fruit! Let’s allow them this “holiday” only two or three times, period. Why did God remove the sons of Judah and leave his daughter-in-law?
“And Judah took a wife for Ira, his firstborn; her name is Tamar. Er, the firstborn of Judah, was disgraceful in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death. And Judah said to Onan: Go in to your brother's wife, marry her as a brother-in-law, and restore seed to your brother. Onan knew that the seed would not be his, and therefore, when he went in to his brother’s wife, he poured it out on the ground so as not to give seed to his brother. What he did was evil in the sight of the Lord; and He slew him also." Genesis 38:6-10
The brothers Er and Onan did not want to do God's will. They were not going to be fruitful and multiply, and God killed them. Onan, having intimate contact with his wife, poured his semen onto the ground. Today, “educated” humanity has learned to merge semen into contraceptives. But this is one and the same evil in the eyes of the Lord. The family was created for this purpose, to have offspring, this is its meaning.
Only the harlots in the Bible did not want children.
The harlot is shown as: “noisy and unbridled; her feet do not live in her house...” she says, “come in, let us revel in tenderness until the morning, let us enjoy love” Proverbs 7:11,18.
For a harlot, children are a burden. But when Christians complain about the mountains of problems associated with children (low salaries and cramped housing), this speaks of disbelief in God, who is able not only to raise a family, but to bring all of humanity into the house of His feast.
“He brought me into the banqueting house, and His banner over me was love” Song of Solomon 2:4
The Lord, with his mighty hand, fills the Church with young people. This is wonderful! The task of pastors is to bring their flock into fellowship with God. This means knowing the WORD, living by It and being able to reveal the meaning of the Scriptures. New families are born, children appear, and we are obliged to teach young people to love the Lord and the amazing world of the Bible, wiser and deeper than which nothing has been created. You can often see how young spouses, not having had time to give birth to their children, strive to get into the ministry. And yesterday's drug addicts are rushing to become ministers and leaders in the church. The word leader (leader) arose from the English verb (to lead).
But the leader “must not be a convert, lest he become proud and fall into condemnation with the devil. He must also have a good testimony from outsiders, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.” 1 Timothy 3:6-7
When a young family leaves their young children with grandmothers and nannies, and runs off to “save” non-believers, this is not Christian! Their main ministry is the family. Here is your growing home church, it should be filled and develop. Dad is a pastor, and mom is a helper. What could be more wonderful than praying with your children, teaching them to please God with faith and obedience?
There is an expression “family institution”. An institute where some learn to be parents, while others learn to be sons and daughters. Without the head professor, the Lord Jesus Christ, this institution will collapse. What could be more graceful and blessed than children with whom you comprehend God, learning to love Him more than anything in the world?
How many Christian homes have we met in which the family is like the “7th Self”? When the Iron Curtain disappeared in the country, and missionary streams rushed through numerous cities and towns, very young and spiritually immature pastors were elected in the new churches. Many at that time did not have not only spiritual, but also family experience. But they were quickly broken by an unprecedented money supply, lack of control and irresponsibility. And appetites continue to grow!
You will not find a leader who does not want to have a big church. (Like Pastor Yonggi Cho or Castellanos) Because the influx of a mass of new people means new finances, which is very attractive to money-loving shepherds. Jesus said that it is impossible to serve two masters, God and Mammon, for you will hate one and love the other.
“...if anyone desires the episcopate, he desires a good deed. But the bishop must be blameless, the husband of one wife, sober, chaste, decent, honest, hospitable, teacher, not a drunkard, not a murderer, not quarrelsome, not covetous, but quiet, peace-loving, not money-loving, managing his house well, keeping his children in obedience with all integrity; for whoever does not know how to manage his own house will care about the Church of God? » 1 Timothy 3:2-5
A leader must manage his home well and keep his children in obedience, the Lord teaches us. Today, secular authorities are more concerned about the birth of children than church parishes. The state financially stimulates the birth of a second child in the family, and what does the church stimulate?
During the times of socialism, people were taught that the main thing was the country, and the family was secondary! Many Christian leaders today think this way. We must save people, bring them to church, in short, serve, and the family will wait. The same false spirit is at work here, working for destruction. There are shepherds who do not raise children, but travel around the world with enviable regularity. I want to understand what they can teach listeners during their endless “tours”? They communicate with children via Skype, but the church is deprived of even this.
When a person travels around the world without a break, this indicates one thing: there is nowhere to put the money and peace is lost! And the wife and children are waiting at home, and the church, which abundantly feeds and sweetly drinks its lost leader and all his household. The apostles of Jesus’ first call walked, pouring out true wealth.
“Peter said: I have no silver and gold; But what I have, this I give to you: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, arise and walk!” Acts 3:6
We can walk either in His ways or in our own. Looking at the priests in Orthodoxy and in other Christian denominations, you begin to understand the deepest meaning of the words of Jesus: “Not everyone can comprehend this word, but to whom it is given, for there are eunuchs who were born like this from the womb; and there are eunuchs who are castrated from people; and there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever can contain it, let him contain it." Matthew 19:11-12
Christ was like this. His whole life was aimed at fulfilling the will of the Father and creating the church. In ancient times, there were eunuchs who voluntarily made such a sacrifice so that their whole life would be devoted to their king. There are eunuchs who themselves took a vow of celibacy in order to give their lives to serve God and the flock.
For, “The unmarried man is concerned about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord, but the married man is concerned about the things of the world, how to please his wife.” 1 Corinthians 7:32-33
Why did kings surround themselves with eunuch servants? Because the skobets had neither his own home nor household members for whom he could take away something from the wealth of the king-ruler. The eunuchs served in grief, young men, Daniel's friends, were entrusted to them. (Book of Daniel 1:10) The eunuchs could not cause harm or damage to the wealth of the kings. They could devote their entire lives to serving without reserve.
Jesus was and is like that. He is our example of absolute service and dedication to the Sovereign Father. Not everyone can accommodate this and decide to completely devote themselves to God. But if it is given to you to become the father of a family, then accept this mission as the most important service on earth. For he who is faithful in small things will also be faithful in large things.
Boundaries of the commandment [↑]
There are established limits to the fulfillment of the commandment “be fruitful and multiply.” To fulfill it, it is necessary to produce at least two children of different sexes, each of whom is capable of producing offspring himself.
But we shouldn't stop there. In the Book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), written by the wisest of people, King Shlomo (Solomon), it is said: “In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening do not let your hand rest, for you do not know what will succeed, this or that, or both are equally good.” (Qohelet 11:6
).
The Talmud (Yevamot 62 b
) concludes from this that even after a person has fulfilled the commandment to be fruitful and multiply, he must try to have more children - in order to raise as many worthy people as possible.
Another reason for having as many children as possible is to fulfill the desire of the Almighty for the world to be filled with His creatures. That is, by multiplying the number of children, we fulfill the Creator’s direct plan in creating this world, and this is also a prescription of the sages.
There is another tradition, which is given in the Talmud: Mashiach will not come until all those souls that the Almighty has planned to bring descend into the world. In other words, with the birth of each child, the world moves closer to its complete correction.
Precepts of the sages in specific cases [↑]
In order to fulfill the commandment “be fruitful and multiply” to a minimum extent (to produce two children of different sexes), the couple is obliged to make maximum efforts, that is, to be together during all periods when conception is most likely. To exempt from this commandment, while the spouses do not yet have two children of different sexes, very compelling arguments are needed, for example, the state of health of the wife or husband (both physical and mental), which does not allow continued childbearing.
If we are talking about an expanded understanding of the commandment “I will dig”
, a competent rabbi can advise taking a break from childbearing. This takes into account such factors as the physiological state of the woman after the last birth, her psychological state, the physiological and psychological state of the father, the characteristics of the couple: their origin, mentality, attitude - the “compatibility” of all this with a large number of children, the ability of parents to give attention, kindness and affection to all children.
As for material wealth, despite the prevailing idea in the modern world that this is a decisive factor, it does not play a big role. This is the opinion of the Torah, handed down by tradition from our sages. The Almighty, sending a child, “obliges” to give him food. And if a couple has financial problems, then this is not due to the number of children, but to many other factors that the Almighty takes into account when allocating our earnings. There won't be less money because of a new child; this can only have a positive impact on our material wealth.
Chapter 9
Gen.9:20–21.
These verses reveal to us the motive behind Noah's subsequent important prophecy.
Noah began to cultivate the land and planted a vineyard;
Armenia, where, according to the Bible, Noah's Ark donkey, is considered the birthplace of grapes.
and he drank wine, and became drunk, and lay
naked in his tent.
Moderate consumption of grapes and grape juice is an excellent and healthy remedy, so that, considered from this point of view by Noah, the cultivation of grapes is a useful and good thing. But antediluvian humanity was completely unfamiliar with it and with the use of wine; For the first time, only Noah had to become acquainted with all this, and it could easily have happened that he, not knowing the power and effect of wine, drank more of it than he should have, and fell into the state indicated here. The very expression “started” (LXX, Slav.) already shows that he initiated the use of wine and became intoxicated out of complete ignorance and ignorance of the extent of drinking wine. These mistakes, even of the righteous, are the best warning for us against our arrogance (1 Cor. 10:12) and the most effective medicine in those cases when we are overcome by despair and cowardice due to our sinfulness (Jer. 8:4). “For this reason,” says John Chrysostom, “not only the virtues of the sons, but also their sins are described, so that we avoid the latter and imitate the former” (Demon 29).
Gen.9:22. And Ham the father of Canaan saw his father's nakedness,
Ham saw the same nakedness that our first parents painfully felt immediately after eating the forbidden fruit (Gen. 3:7) and which, out of a sense of shame, they covered with aprons. However, there was very little fault on Noah's part in all this: first, as the context shows, he did it in a dream and therefore unconsciously; secondly, he allowed this to happen at home (in his tent), where no one else’s immodest gaze should penetrate and where every person has the right to allow himself greater freedom and ease of action.
and going out, he told his two brothers.
This last addition reveals all of Ham’s guilt: if Ham had only been an involuntary witness to such a somewhat seductive picture and had not attached any special significance to everything he saw, then he would not have committed any crime. But the Holy Scripture says the opposite: “in this haste to tell his brothers what he saw, a deeply corrupt nature is visible; in his act one can see an evil joy in humiliating his father, a sense of pride and self-superiority and a lack of shame” (Vlastov). Revealing Ham's motives, which are quite clearly expressed here, we can say that he mocked his father in front of his brothers, portraying in an unattractive light how their father - this six-hundred-year-old old man, such an unshakable pillar of piety and faith - could reach such a ridiculous state! “He, perhaps, while talking about what happened, was still mocking his father’s disgrace, not heeding the wise one, who says: do not seek glory in the dishonor of your father” (John Chrysostom. Dem. 29), (Sir. 3:10; Exod. 21 :17; Lev.19:3; Matt. 15:4; Proverbs 30:17). He seemed glad that the one who served as a model of strict life and curbed his evil behavior was now himself in an indecent position from intoxication.
Gen.9:23. Shem and Japheth took the robe and, putting it on their shoulders, went and covered the nakedness of their father;
By this action they not only did not express sympathy for Ham’s act, but also destroyed its very reason. And since Ham revealed a vicious inclination and a corrupted imagination, a lack of filial piety, so, on the contrary, Shem and Japheth gave us an edifying example of chastity, modesty and high filial love and respect for his father, even at such an exceptional moment when he, apparently , deserved it least of all.
their faces were turned back, and they did not see their father’s nakedness.
A small, but very characteristic detail, proving to what degree of moral sensitivity the moral sense of these two worthy sons of Noah reached.
Gen.9:24. Noah woke up from his wine
From here it is clear that everything that preceded happened to Noah during his sleep, that is, without the participation of his conscious will.
and he knew what his youngest son had done to him,
“How did he know this? - asks John Chrysostom and answers this way: maybe the brothers told it, not in order to accuse their brother, but to explain the matter, how it happened, so that Ham would receive the medicine appropriate to his illness” (Demon 24.). No less wisely, John Chrysostom resolves another bewilderment - how should we understand here the name of Ham as the “lesser” or youngest son, when it is reliably known that he was the middle one (Gen. 9:18): “Ham, of course, was not the youngest; he was second and older than Japheth, but if he was older than him in age, he turned out to be younger in soul and his insolence placed him lower than his younger brother.” In the Hebrew text, the word “lesser” expresses a comparative form, not an excellent one, and therefore does not indicate Ham as the least of all the sons of Noah, but only comparatively younger in relation to Shem.
