Bible Strands
Genesis 28:3
May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, so that you may become a company of peoples.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Isaac speaks this blessing to Jacob immediately before Jacob departs for Paddan-aram to find a wife from his mother’s brother Laban’s family.
The words — The text employs שַׁדַּי (Shaddai), literally Almighty, to identify God’s covenant power, and קְהַל (qahal), meaning a company or assembly, to specify the scale of the promised multiplication.
The thread — This phrasing resurfaces in Genesis 35:11 and 48:3 when God reaffirms the patriarchal promises to Jacob, and it directly echoes the creation mandate in Genesis 1:28.
Why it lands — The verse requires the reader to acknowledge the unbroken transmission of the Abrahamic covenant and to accept that God’s people will expand through faithful presence in a foreign land.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a multitude of people;
Cross-references
- Genesis 48:3 Jacob said to Joseph, “God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and there He blessed me
- Genesis 35:11 And God told him, “I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation—even a company of nations—shall come from you, and kings shall descend from you.
- Genesis 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that crawls upon the earth.”
- Genesis 17:1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty. Walk before Me and be blameless.
- Genesis 22:17 I will surely bless you, and I will multiply your descendants like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will possess the gates of their enemies.
- Genesis 9:1 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
- Genesis 13:16 I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if one could count the dust of the earth, then your offspring could be counted.
- Genesis 41:52 And the second son he named Ephraim, saying, “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”
- Genesis 43:14 May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man, that he may release your other brother along with Benjamin. As for me, if I am bereaved, I am bereaved.”
- Genesis 24:60 And they blessed Rebekah and said to her, “Our sister, may you become the mother of thousands upon thousands. May your offspring possess the gates of their enemies.”