Tuesday, March 15, 2016

What does "replenish" mean in Genesis 1:28?

Genesis 1:
[27] So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
[28] And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth
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Gap Theorists staunchly believe that the word "replenish" in Genesis 1:28 means to "refill". 

But the word replenish in the transitive case means TO FILL. Webster's 1828 dictionary...

"REPLEN'ISH, verb transitive [Latin re and plenus, full.]

1. To fill; to stock with numbers or abundance. The magazines are replenished with corn. The springs are replenished with water.
Multiply and replenish the earth. Genesis 1:28."

That is what the original meaning of the word was in English from the 13th-17th centuries. In 1611 the word replenish only meant to "fill", not refill as it does today (just like the word "gay" has changed meaning). Robert Cawdrey's Alphabetical Table of 1604 (and others) lists "to fill" as the only definition of "replenish". 

Also, the King James Bible is its own dictionary and we can see the meaning of the word "replenish" by looking at its usage in the Bible itself.

Isaiah 2:
[6] Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers.
[7] Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots:
[8] Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made

[replenished is defined as "full"]

Jeremiah 31:25 For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul

[satiate means to fill]

Adam was the FIRST man, he and Eve were not refilling the Earth when they had children, because there were no men on the Earth before their time...

1 Corinthians 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

The Gap Theorists cannot use Genesis 1:28 to back their theory, it won't work.

--Eli Caldwell

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