kabash

כָּבַשׁ

What the Word Actually Means

The pre-fall creation mandate to bring a good but wild earth into fruitful order. Stewardship, not extraction.

Kabash means to subdue, to bring something under order and make it serviceable. In Bereshit (Genesis) 1:28 it is given alongside radah to the man and the woman together, before the fall, as the work of taking a good but unformed creation and bringing it into fruitful order. This is gardening, not strip-mining. Read through post-fall appetite, kabash has been twisted into a license to consume the earth as raw material for human use. The original sense is the care a steward owes what the Owner called good. The mandate did not change after the fall. The reading did.

What English Gives You

to subdue, to bring under order, to make serviceable

The Original

כָּבַשׁ

Where to Find It

Genesis 1:28

Source Language

Hebrew

How to Say It

kabash

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