Genesis 9:7
וְאַתֶּם פְּרוּ וּרְבוּ שִׁרְצוּ בָאָרֶץ וּרְבוּ־בָֽהּ׃ ס
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וְאַתֶּ֖ם פְּר֣וּ וּרְב֑וּ שִׁרְצ֥וּ בָאָ֖רֶץ וּרְבוּ־בָֽהּ׃ ס
ὑμεῖς δὲ αὐξάνεσθε καὶ πληθύνεσθε, καὶ πληρώσατε γῆν καὶ πληθύνεσθε ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Vos autem crescite et multiplicamini, et ingredimini super terram, et implete eam.
Pero ustedes, sean fecundos y multiplíquense; pueblen la tierra en abundancia y multiplíquense en ella”.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Mas vosotros fructificad, y multiplicaos; procread abundantemente en la tierra, y multiplicaos en ella.
But as for you, be fruitful and multiply; spread out across the earth and multiply upon it.”
✦ What the text says
Summary
Genesis 9:7 delivers a series of four imperative commands addressed to "you" (plural), instructing fruitfulness, multiplication, and spreading across the earth. The verse repeats verbs of increase already used earlier in Genesis, reinforcing the command with intensified phrasing.
Key words
'a.Tem ("you", H0859D) — independent personal pronoun, masculine plural, placed emphatically at the start with the conjunction ve ("and"), marking a contrastive or emphatic shift to the addressees ("but you...").
pe.Ru ("be fruitful", H6509) — qal imperative, masculine plural, the first command in the sequence, calling for reproductive increase.
re.Vu ("multiply", H7235A) — qal imperative, masculine plural, paired with pe.Ru via the conjunction u ("and"); this root appears twice more in the verse (once as re.vu- in position 10).
shir.Tzu ("swarm", H8317) — qal imperative, masculine plural, a verb elsewhere used of teeming aquatic or small creatures, here applied to human proliferation "on the earth" (ba'aretz, H0776G).
Va-h ("on it", H9003 + H9034) — preposition with third-person feminine singular pronominal suffix, referring back to 'aretz ("earth", H0776G), closing the verse by repeating the locative idea with a pronoun instead of the full noun.
What the text says
The Hebrew verse is built entirely on a chain of four masculine plural imperatives — pe.Ru, re.Vu, shir.Tzu, and re.vu- — connected by the conjunction ve/u ("and"). This stacking of commands, without any intervening explanatory clauses, creates a cumulative rhetorical effect: each verb adds a nuance of increase (fruitfulness, multiplication, swarming/spreading) rather than simply repeating the same idea. The opening ve'atem ("and you") uses an independent pronoun that is grammatically unnecessary for the imperatives to function (Hebrew imperatives already encode person and number), so its presence signals emphasis, singling out "you" as the addressees of this directive.
The final imperative re.vu- is repeated from earlier in the verse, but instead of governing "the earth" (ba'aretz) with the full noun, it takes the prepositional phrase bah ("in it/on it") — preposition be plus the third-person feminine suffix pointing back to 'aretz. This creates a structural frame: the verse begins with the general locative "on the earth" and ends with the pronominal "on it," bracketing the swarming command in the middle.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders shirtzu ("swarm", H8317) as πληρώσατε ("fill"), a different semantic field than the Hebrew's swarming/teeming imagery. The Vulgate similarly shifts this term to ingredimini ("enter/go into"), diverging further from the Hebrew's biological connotation of shirtzu. Both the LXX and Vulgate thus present three distinct verb-actions (increase, fill/enter, multiply) rather than the Hebrew's four-part sequence built on the repeated root rabah (H7235A) and the distinct root sharatz (H8317).
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.