Creation Day Six by Artist Phillip Ratner
IT is customary to count 613 commandments given to Israel through the Torah. These commandments include also “the Seven Noahide Commandments”, which we shall discuss in the next chapter , the first one of which is the divine command to the Adamic couple on the “day” of their creation, namely “Be fruitful, and multiply, replenish the earth and subdue her” (Gen. 1:28). This commandment has to do with the relationship of humankind – Adam – and the Living Earth – Adamah, and it is already given at the stage of reation, and therefore it can be seen as a special kind of commandment – actually the mother of all the commandments, the kernel from which all the other 612 commandments issue from or facilitate its complete attainment. This first commandment can be divided to four sub-commandments that form a series:
“Peru” (be fruitful) – the primary and natural basis for the growth of humankind is the fertility – Piryon – which is connected with passion. But fertility alone does not secure multiplying, not as long as mortality, and especially child mortality, is rampant.
“uRevu” (and multiply) – Increase in numbers comes through the formation of a double infrastructure – material and cultural. With increase (Ribuy ?????) there comes also struggle (Riv ???) (“Malthusian Law”). The struggle between brothers, which we shall find below started with Qayin (Cain) and Hevel (Abel), and only the provision of a cultural-civic infrastructure – of civilization – allows the peaceful coexistence. It is only at precisely our times that the enormous increase of humankind is happening, which for the first time will allow the transformation of humankind to something like a multi-cellular creature of over ten to the tenth power interlinked individuals (as was explained above).
“mal’oo et ha’Are?” (replenish the earth) – here enters the inter-relation between Adam and Adamah. In the next Parashah we shall find the people of the generation that preferred to concentrate in a distinct “City and a Tower” instead of spreading over the whole face of the earth. The first commandment aims for a multiplying that fills the whole glob, in order to transform the entire earth into an intelligent super-being.
“veKivshu’ha” (and subdue her) – this is a word that seems problematic. Yet again, only in our times, where the problematic becomes evident, it is already possible to understand the full meaning of the first commandment.
It is evident that if there are Ribuy ve’Riv – increase in numbers and contention, there is also violent occupation, of overtaking the other and his homestead territory. With the filling of the earth with humans, the relation to the earth is in danger of reaching situation of occupation and exploitation that deprives the will to life of the other – and of the whole earth. It seems as if the entire humankind, through the global economic system, has declared a war of conquest upon the earth, to exploit her treasures that she gathered through huge eras – and especially the fossil fuels that have been hoarded as if the whole earth were a giant egg that serves to get out of her the mature Adam and get abandoned.
But nowadays it is also possible to understand that the aim of this commandment has to do not with conquest – Kibush – but with Kvishah – Paving the ground in the sense of building Kvishim, namely roads – of building a global system of continuous tracks and paved roads in which fueled (or electric) vehicles transport the products of the global industries to every place of human habitation. The roads are like the veins of the new humankind super-organism. The fuels that were hoarded in the depth of the earth move all the processes that connect and unify all the places of habitation (the Oikumenos) – not to abandon, but to make it a living being.
Let us see the figure of the first commandment.
By Grace (Hesed) By Might (Gevurah)
Adam Be fruitful and multiply
Adamah replenish the earth And pave her
To be continued….
