The Phrase Today
"Go forth and multiply" is a phrase with a double life in English. In its serious register, it describes the divine mandate for human reproduction, family life, and the filling of the earth - a theological statement about human purpose that conservative religious communities still cite in discussions of family size, contraception, and demographic policy. In its comic register, it is one of the most well-known polite substitutes for a crude expletive, the punchline of a joke about biblical language: "And God said to them, go forth and multiply" followed by a rude variant of the command. This comedic use has made the phrase one of the most widely recognized biblical quotations among people who have no religious affiliation.
Biblical Origin
The command appears first in Genesis 1:28 (KJV), God's first address to the newly created human pair: "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it." The phrase recurs in Genesis 9:1 after the Flood, where God repeats the mandate to Noah: "And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth."
The Hebrew is pru u'revu (be fruitful and multiply), paired with u'milu et ha'aretz (and fill the earth). This is God's first recorded command to humanity - a commission, a blessing, and a purpose all in one. The repetition after Noah signals that it is not merely an instruction but a constitutive definition of what human beings are for.
How the KJV Cemented It
The KJV's rendering "be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth" was the standard English form for centuries. The vernacular compression into "go forth and multiply" (replacing "be fruitful" with "go forth") is a common shorthand that appeared in sermons, commentary, and everyday speech. The command's dual occurrence - at the creation and after the Flood - and its position as God's very first instruction to humanity guaranteed its memorability. Every sermon on creation or family life invoked it.
The phrase's path into comedy runs through the education of a literate, English-speaking Christian culture that knew the Bible well enough to recognize and misapply it. The joke works only for people who know the original - it is a product of religious literacy, not religious ignorance.
Semantic Drift
In Genesis, the command encompasses not just biological reproduction but the entire human project of filling and ordering the earth - civilization, cultivation, and stewardship. The command to "replenish the earth" and "subdue it" suggests an active partnership with creation, not merely passive reproduction.
In modern religious discourse, the phrase is most often cited in debates about family size, reproductive technology, and contraception. In conservative religious communities, it is a mandate for large families. In secular discourse, it is invoked to critique natalist religious policies or, conversely, to justify population growth arguments. The comic usage strips all this away and treats the phrase as a politely coded directive to procreate.
Historical Usage
The phrase structured demographic and colonial discourse from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century. English settlers in North America, drawing on the Genesis mandate, described the "empty" land as waiting to be filled by a multiplying Christian people - a theological framing of colonization that had devastating consequences for Indigenous populations who were rendered invisible by the framework. The phrase was also central to debates about Puritan family life, with large families seen as obedience to the divine command.
In nineteenth-century debates about population, the phrase entered the conversation about Malthusian limits - whether unlimited multiplication was actually possible or desirable. Darwin's observation of population pressure as a driver of natural selection drew, indirectly, on the same biblical framework that assumed fruitfulness and multiplication as the natural tendency of living things.
Cross-Linguistic Equivalents
Hebrew: pru u'revu is the original - still used in modern Hebrew. German: "Seid fruchtbar und mehret euch" (Luther). French: "Soyez feconds et multipliez." Spanish: "Fructificad y multiplicaos." All translations preserve the paired verbs. The phrase is universally recognized in cultures shaped by biblical literature. In Islamic tradition, the Quran similarly encourages marriage and children as fulfilling God's purpose, though without a specific "go forth and multiply" formula.
In Literature and Culture
The phrase appears throughout English literature as a marker of divine authorization for reproduction. John Milton builds on it in Paradise Lost when God blesses Adam and Eve. In Victorian fiction, large families are often described in the shadow of the Genesis command. In the twentieth century, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) uses a grotesque misapplication of the Genesis mandate as the theological justification for the totalitarian reproductive system of Gilead - one of the most influential literary critiques of the phrase's potential for misuse.
In popular culture, the phrase's comic use is ubiquitous in stand-up comedy, internet memes, and greeting cards. "Go forth and multiply" appears on office humor items, and the joke variant is widely recognized as a clean way to say something not clean.
Related Biblical Phrases
Dust to dust (Genesis 3:19) describes the end of the being who "goes forth and multiplies." The sweat of your brow (Genesis 3:19) is the other half of the post-Fall mandate - labor and reproduction together constitute the human condition. Be fruitful alone appears in John 15:8 in a spiritualized sense (bear spiritual fruit), showing how the Genesis vocabulary was adapted theologically. Have dominion (Genesis 1:28) is the command that follows "be fruitful and multiply" in the same verse.
Common Misconceptions
The most common misconception is that the command is purely about biological reproduction. In context it encompasses filling the earth with human civilization and exercising responsible stewardship over creation - a much broader mandate than mere reproduction. A second misconception is that the command was given only once; it is repeated to Noah after the Flood, establishing it as a recurring commission rather than a one-time instruction. Third, the interpretation of "replenish" is debated: some read it as implying the earth was previously inhabited, others as simply meaning "fill" - the Hebrew male means to fill, not necessarily to refill.