Lin

“The first man and woman certainly were not going to “fill the earth” so God’s commission in Genesis 1 must go forward to the rest of us.”

How do we know what was going to happen before the fall in this respect? Here is what we DO know: Even after the fall, folks lived to 900 years old for a time until God declared the years to be 120. Adam and Eve were to live forever before the fall so the be ‘fruitful and mulitply command’, given BEFORE the fall, could have brought in quite a population before Gen 3. For whatever God’s purposes, they did not have children before the fall.

“So, are you and Cheryl claiming that a woman who never has children has disobeyed God’s command in Genesis 1? Or is that null and void nowadays now that the earth is pretty full? ”

That was a command before the fall. And, We are under a New Covenant now. The command now is to go and make disciples. If the command were still to be ‘fruitful and mulitply’ then Paul would never have written that it is ok not to marry so as to serve the Lord better. (I realize I am saying this to woman with a passel of kids so please do not be offended. I think large families are wonderful and a gift from God. That does not mean it is still a command)

“Were only the early women “required” to give birth or else be in disobedience to a command of God? What happened to the women who were infertile or never married?””

You are forgetting that sin entered the world and changed everything. Besides, we have examples of such women in Hannah, Sarah, Rachael and others who struggled with this. In a Patriarchal culture it is all they had to offer in many ways.

Being a woman who has only one child after many years of trying, I can certainly relate to those who have trouble in this regard. The most horrible thing was to hear from some patriarchal pastor that a closed womb was a punishment from God for some besetting sin. We live in a fallen world and bad stuff happens to both followers of Christ and pagans. How we deal with the bad stuff is what counts.

Have you ever wondered why a drug abuser can have child after child but a follower of Christ is infertile? Some dear friends of mine are adopting children of a drug abuser (they came about this as fostor parents) who keeps getting pregnant but the court has ordered she cannot keep them. They are now adopting her second child. Why would God allow the drug abuser to keep having children yet allow the follower of Christ to be barren? Such is our fallen world where it rains on the just and unjust.