Replenish

This is a word that has some importance to the discussion of how literally the first chapters of Genesis are to be taken.  The verse at the center of the matter is found generally in the older translations to read, “And Elohim blessed them, and Elohim 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.” (Gen 1:28)

This is not an instruction to fill an earth that was once already full of life.  Individuals who hold the gap theory, or other alternate view of Creation than is plainly revealed in Genesis, believe that dinosaurs and so on are the creatures of a previous age that was destroyed before men.  We believe that “all things” pertaining to the physical universe were created in six days, as both Genesis and Exodus tell us.

The word for “replenish” in Hebrew comes from the word maleh, which means to simply “fill.”  We need not even go to the original language for this if we understand that replenish comes from an older term replene, not re-plenish, or to “plenish again.”  Replene comes from Latin to Old English by way of French… and in its earlier forms meant only “to fill,” even if it is the for the first time.  Even today, when we say something is “replete,” we mean it is full, such as “replete with wisdom;” and there is no connotation there of having once been full, then emptied, then filled again.