Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”“
Genesis 1:22

God didn’t fill the Earth with these living creatures. He told THEM to procreate, multiply, and go throughout the Earth. It was THEIR purpose and THEIR responsibility.

Since God blessed them after He pronounced them good (Genesis 1:21), we know that everything was just as He had intended it to be. And inherent in that was the ability He gave them to produce more of their kinds. To increase the variety that He commanded to be.

The waterfowl were brought forth from the waters, but here He gave them permission to multiply on the Earth – not restricting their lives to the water, but also making it a simple thing to procreate and raise their young on land.

The sages teach that they got the special blessing to multiply (whereas the vegetation did not) because God knew that humans would eventually hunt and eat them, thereby being a threat to their existence if they didn’t multiply. The vegetation was not in danger of being wiped out by humanity, so they didn’t warrant a special blessing.