Lest Blood Be Shed

Genesis 1:28

Raw Translation
And [he]{God} blessed them and [he]{God} said to them, '[you all] be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and bring it under foot and rule over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the heavens and over every living thing that [is] creeping upon the earth.'

NJPS translation
God blessed them and God said to them, "Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on the earth."

(My) Interpretive translation
By God's speech, God blessed them and created in them the ability to be beneficial and increase; filling the earth. So that they might help create order in the world and care for the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the air and care for every living thing that is creeping on the earth.

When we read the first myth of creation in the book of Genesis we are encountered with a transcendent deity of supreme power. There are no cosmic battles between gods. In fact, there aren't even any other beings in existence that are named, though there might be some hiding from the way God addresses God's self in the plural and it has been suggested by some scholars that the Hebrew tehom (the deep) which God broods over "may once have been the name of a mythical being much like the Mesopotamian Tiamat, the female dragonesque personification of the primordial salt-water ocean, representing the aggressive forces of primitive chaos that contended against the god of creativity."¹ Though lacking in cosmic battles the purpose of the creator god is similar to many of the creations myths from this same area of the world. The creator is bringing order to that which is chaos. The god of Genesis is so powerful that all it need do is speak (yo'mer) and the chaos is ordered. So, we see the sovereignty of God as well as the purposes of God during this creative six days. God has pushed back the waters of chaos and created a space with God's speech (yo'mer) for order to flourish and grow.