Genesis 1:28

"And subdue it:" It is missing a [letter,] vav (and so could be read as kavshah, which means subdues her); to teach you that the male subdues the female from being unrestrained. And also, it is to teach you that since it is his way to conquer, the man is commanded in being fruitful and multiplying, and not the woman.

And He blessed them, and the Lord said to them, Increase and multiply, and fill the earth with sons and daughters, and prevail over it, in its possessions; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the heavens, and over every creeping animal that creepeth upon the earth.

AND G-D BLESSED THEM. This is an actual blessing [unlike Verse 22 where the blessing of the fish and fowl consisted of bestowing upon them the power of procreation]. Therefore, it is written here, And G-d blessed them, and G-d said unto them. But above in Verse 22 it is written, And G-d blessed them, saying, [the word saying indicating] that the blessing is the command of procreation, that He gave them the power of bringing forth offspring, and no other command with which they are to be blessed. [But in the case of man, in addition to the power of being fruitful, he was also blessed that he have dominion over the earth, hence Scripture continues, and G-d said unto them.]

AND REPLENISH THE EARTH. This is a blessing that they fill the earth because of their numbers. In my opinion, He blessed them that they fill the whole earth, and that the nations should disperse according to their families and should populate the far ends of the world because of their numbers and not be concentrated in one place, as was the thought of the men of the generation of the dispersion.

AND SUBDUE IT. He gave them power and dominion over the earth to do as they wish with the cattle, the reptiles, and all that crawl in the dust, and to build, and to pluck up that which is planted, and from its hills to dig copper, and other similar things. This is included in what He said and over all the earth.

וכבשוה, the letter כ is “weak,” (without the dot inside) as in Numbers 32,29 ונכבשה הארץ לפניכם, “and the land will have been conquered before you.” The reason why there is no such dot is because it is in the imperative mode. On the other hand, if the letter כ here would have had the dagesh,” the construction of the verb would have been in the past tense, not an imperative.

וכבשה, this is not a directive to conquer earth with muscular power, but to subdue it by means of man’s superior intellect. It means that man is to use his intelligence to prevent predators from invading his habitats, demonstrating the fact that man is superior, can outwit the beasts.

ורדו, trapping the beasts, training them to bend to man’s will.

ויברך..פרו ורבו, the word הפריה describes the fertilisation, leading up to birth; the word רביה refers to the quantitative development of such offspring. Even though, in the first instance this is a blessing, just as it is in verse 22 when G’d blessed the fish, our sages in Yevamot 65 and in Bereshit Rabbah 8,12 understand this verse as a commandment to the human race to reproduce. They say: “man is command to practice this commandment, whereas for woman it is not an active commandment.” Although the commandment was addressed to man in the plural mode,פרו ורבו, encouraging us to think that the commandment applies to males and females equally, this is not so. As far as the blessing contained in this verse is concerned, it applies to both males and females; the commandment part applies only to the males, and is based on the singular mode in the word וכבשה where the missing letter ו which would have made this a plural mode indicates to our sages that as a directive the whole verse is applicable only to the males of the species. They use psychology to arrive at this conclusion, saying that it is in the nature of the male to engage in conquest, כבוש, not in the mature of the females of the species. Even though this matter is the subject of some disagreement among the sages, (on that folio in Yevamot), the halachah has been decided according to the view that only the male is obligated to fulfill the commandment to have children. The defective spelling of the word וכבשה without the letter ו in the middle, gives rise to additional halachic points, such as that it is not the nature of a woman to go out into the public marketplace, and that the male is to be the instigator of marital intercourse and not his wife. (Bereshit Rabbah 8,12)

ורדו בדגת הים, we have already explained the meaning of this on verse 26.

ובכל חיה הרמשת על הארץ, the word רמשת here includes both the free roaming beasts and the domestic beasts seeing that all of them move about on the face of the earth.

ויברך אותם אלוקים, “G–d blessed them.” We find the same expression used by the Torah pertaining to the Sabbath. (Genesis 2,3) This teaches us that when one acquires something new, especially garments, one is to pronounce a blessing acknowledging that one’s ability to have done so was thanks to the Creator.

פרו ורבו, “be fruitful and multiply!” this blessing did not include mules, as we know from the Torah’s cryptic report that a certain man by the name of Anah had made horses and donkeys mate as a result of which a new species called mules came into being. (Genesis 36,24) (after having cross bred horses and she donkeys) “this is Anah who found the mules in the desert which had been the result of horses and asses being crossbred.” This is the reason why mules do not reproduce their species. According to our sages, he did so, seeing that he himself was a bastard as related in the beginning of the same verse. He had slept with his mother. Even according to the opinion of Rabbi Yossi, in the Talmud tractate Pessachim folio 54, who claims that immediately after the first Sabbath Adam crossbred two mammals, as a resulted of which the species mules came into existence there is no inconsistency here as the blessing to be fruitful and to multiply had been given to man prior to the first Sabbath.