You. The Bible giving encouragement to some to not marry. I’m not using any catchy graphics or questioning anyone’s validity as an author of books of the Bible. While you are using Genesis: have you considered that when that command was given there were eight people on that boat and now we have 8 billion?
Discussion
It also shows up in Genesis 1 but to be fair, almost nobody understands Genesis 1 and to your point, Genesis 1 is covering the same scenario as Genesis 9: pole flip cataclysm that caused a global flood event. The 7 day story is meant to tell us what the aftermath of the pole flip looked like to the few survivors who made it through these evolutionary bottlenecks that explain punctuated equilibrium and stratigraphic homogeneity.
Genesis 1 and 9 aren’t covering the same event. Genesis 1 is the creation of the cosmos from nothing. Genesis 9 is covenant renewal after judgment on a corrupted world.
You’re overlaying catastrophism and evolutionary theory onto a text that’s making theological claims about God’s sovereign ordering of creation and His covenant faithfulness.
I didn't say "event". I said "scenario".
Paul’s counsel on singleness in 1 Corinthians 7 was given during “the present distress” and persecution, not as a universal ideal. He explicitly said marriage is good and singleness is a gift for some, not a mandate for all.
And yes, there are 8 billion people now. Half of them are in nations with su replacement fertility. Japan, South Korea, Italy, Spain, and most of the West are collapsing demographically.
The command wasn’t “fill the earth then stop.” It was “be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.” That’s a creational mandate tied to dominion, not a population quota.
You don't even understand that the male and female stuff Christ was talking about is referring to the Holy Trinity...the actual Holy Trinity...the one that is in every tradition.
God the Father is a distorted combination of two concepts: the One Infinite Creator and a set of Divine attributes that are penetrative in nature called "the Divine Masculine". Wisdom, Power, and Victory are all Divine traits that are penetrative. Wisdom penetrates foolishness.
Power penetrates resistance.
Victory penetrates thresholds.
The "Holy Spirit" is the Christian version of "the Divine Feminine" which is a set of Divine traits that are receptive like Understanding, Mercy, and Glory.
Christ was a Kabbalah master. The Lord's Prayer is essentially a "covering of the bases" of the Sephiroth of the Tree of Life of Kabbalah.
When a person embodies the Divine Masculine traits and the Divine Feminine traits, that person experiences what you might understand as "the fiery baptism of the Holy Spirit" which is represented in many other traditions in similar, fiery ways. Such a person is a "Divine Child" or a "Child of God". In the case of Jesus Christ, because he was incarnated in a male body, they called him a "Son of God". Christians distorted that though and made it "the" Son of God instead of "a Child of God".
I never said there was a quota and I’d love to discuss with more people what “be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it” means. “Have kids, have kids, have kids, and destroy dandelions in your grass “ is not it. I honestly have no idea how many people is intended by that mandate but I don’t think the tens of thousands of people per square mile in the cities is deficient. Gardeners greening the desert I think are doing more to fill the earth than welfare moms popping out another kid. I think away from the contentious contributions we could have a reasonable discussion about the variety of ways individuals can contribute to that command. Don’t get so caught up with fighting that you mistake allies of a different group for an enemy.