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.”
⛓ Read Genesis 1 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion1
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
The gospel 'bearing fruit and growing... in all the world' (v.6) replays the creation/Edenic mandate 'be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.' The paired participles fruit-bearing + increasing, set worldwide, deliberately recast the protological blessing as the spread of the word, a Genesis-creation coherence the hymn that follows will make explicit.
High confidenceEcho7
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
Paul's catalogue 'all things are yours... the world... things present, things to come' may evoke the creation mandate of dominion over all things now restored to those who belong to Christ. The link is to the figural inheritance/dominion theme rather than a verbal citation, so it is faint and contested.
Low confidenceForbidding marriage runs against the creational blessing, 'Be fruitful and multiply.' A faint echo grounding the polemic against marriage-prohibition in the goodness of the procreative mandate.
Low confidenceThe counsel that younger widows 'marry, bear children, rule the household' reflects the creational mandate to be fruitful and multiply and to govern the domestic sphere. Paul roots his pastoral preference in the created good of marriage and childbearing.
Low confidenceThe creation mandate to 'be fruitful and multiply' is the headwater of the OT multiplication idiom that Acts 6:7 redeploys for the growing community. Diffuse rather than pointed; the proximate model is the Exodus growth language, but the Genesis blessing stands behind it.
Low confidenceThe creation mandate 'be fruitful and multiply' supplies the underlying 'grow and multiply' diction that Luke applies to the word of God, personifying it as a living, increasing entity.
Low confidence'Every kind of animal, bird, creeping thing, and sea creature is tamed by mankind' recalls the creation grant of dominion over the beasts; James turns the trope ironically — humanity tames the beasts but cannot tame its own tongue.
Low confidenceThe mandate to subdue and have dominion over 'the fish of the sea' lurks behind a restored humanity gathering the fish at the creative word of the risen Lord. Faint: shared lexeme 'fish of the sea' and a new-creation framing (resurrection 'after these things'), but no verbal citation and the link is thematic.
Low confidence