55. Verse 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, ¹ and over every living thing that creeps upon the earth.

Because the most ancient people applied the term Marriage to understanding and will, or faith and love, when joined together, they gave the name Fruitfulness to any good resulting from that marriage, and Multiplication to any truth. For this reason similar expressions occur in the Prophets, as in Ezekiel,

I will multiply upon you man and beast, and they will multiply and be fruitful, and I will resettle you ² to be as in your ancient times, and I will bless you more than in your former times, and you will know that I am Jehovah, and I will cause man to walk upon you, even My people Israel. Ezekiel 36:8-11.

Here 'man' is used to mean the spiritual man, who is also called Israel, 'ancient times' the Most Ancient Church, 'former times' the Ancient Church which came after the Flood. The reason why 'multiplying', which relates to truth, comes first and why 'being fruitful', which relates to good, follows is that the subject is the person who is to be regenerated, not one who has been regenerated.

[2] When the understanding is coupled to the will, or faith to love, the individual is called by the Lord in Isaiah 'a married land',

Your land will no more be called Desolate, but you will be named My-good-pleasure-is-in-her, and your land, Married; for Jehovah will take His pleasure in you, and your land will be married. Isaiah 62:4.

The resulting fruits which are matters of truth are called 'sons', and the fruits which are matters of good are called 'daughters'. This recurs very frequently in the Word.

[3] The earth is 'being filled' when there are many goods and truths, for when the Lord is 'blessing' and 'saying' - that is, when He is at work - the increase of good and truth is limitless, as the Lord says,

The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field; it is indeed the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of all plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air ³ come and nest in its branches. Matthew 13:31-32.

'A grain of mustard seed' is the good a person has before he becomes spiritual. It is 'the smallest of all seeds' because he imagines that he himself is the source of the good he does. In reality what he does of himself is nothing but evil, yet because he is in a state of being regenerated there is some element of good, though it is quite 'the smallest of all'. Later on when faith is being joined to love it grows larger and becomes 'a plant'. Once it has finally been joined to love it develops into a tree, and at that point 'the birds of the air, ³ which here are truths or intellectual concepts, 'nest in its branches', which are facts.

[4] A person is involved in conflict not only when becoming spiritual, but also when he is spiritual. Hence the statement, 'Subdue the earth, and have dominion over it'.

Footnotes:

6589. 'And cause you to go up out of this land to the land which He swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob' means that they are about to come into the state of the Church that the ancients lived in. This is clear from the meaning of 'the land of Egypt', from which they were to go up, as the Church when it has been laid waste - the Church laid waste was represented by the Egyptians through their oppression of the children of Israel, and the perishing of it through their drowning in the Sea Suph; and from the meaning of 'the land of Canaan', to which the children of Israel were about to go up, as the Lord's kingdom and the Church, dealt within 1607, 3038, 3481, 3705, 4447, 4517.

[2] The Ancient Church, or the state of the Church in which the ancients lived, is what is meant by God's having sworn to give that land to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. These three are used to mean in the highest sense the Lord, and in the representative sense His kingdom in heaven and His kingdom on earth, which is the Church, 1965, 1989, 2011, 3245, 3305 (end), 6098, 6185, 6276; therefore 'swearing the land to them' means confirming that they are about to come into the state of the Church that the ancients lived in. Not that the descendants of Jacob were about to do so, for they were incapable of coming into the state of that Church; they came into no more than the external aspect of that Church, that is to say, its representative acts, yet barely into these. The promise that is made refers instead to those who are meant spiritually by 'the children of Israel', that is, who are all members of the spiritual Church - both those who lived in it at that time and those who were about to come into it.

[3] 'Swearing' means confirmation from the Divine, see 1842, 3375.

The land of Canaan was promised and given to the descendants of Jacob so that they might represent the Church; and the reason for this was that the Church had existed in that land since ancient times, during which all the places there received their names and became representative, see 3686, 4447, 4516, 4517, 5136, 6516.