What Does the Bible Say About Having Children? Genesis

Would you be surprised if I said that there are a total of 49 references in Genesis that have something to do with the topic of having children (along with some very important ones on the sacredness of human life)? Most of these references include multiple verses, so the total number of verses far exceeds 49. This directly defies the claim that the Bible doesn’t talk clearly about this issue.

It also defies the idea that couples who believe in leaving family planning in God’s hands are basing their decision on only one or two solitary verses. And this is just the beginning; we haven’t even gotten to the rest of the Bible yet.

With joyful enthusiasm, I am pleased to now be able to offer a compilation of every reference in the book of Genesis about having children! These are not just numerical references, but every verse has been typed out in its entirety to make study easy. The complete document is available as a FREE PDF DOWNLOAD. Once downloaded, you can print it out to keep for your own use.

It has taken me considerable time to put this list together, but it was worth it. It was worth it for me personally, because it absolutely confirmed–over and over again–the idea that God is in control of conception. Similarly, I believe it was worth it for other believers, to hopefully be an aid to them in their study of this topic.

Whenever I talk to anybody who seems unsure of what the Bible teaches on this subject, my advice is always to read the Bible again, book by book, jotting down every reference that has to do with conception, pregnancy, childbirth, the blessing and value of children, the significance of a multi-generational legacy, God’s design and purpose for marriage, the sacredness of human life in general, and His sovereignty over life, death, and human destiny. However, I sometimes wonder if they actually follow that suggestion, since I know how much work it is, and many people unfortunately seem only too happy to continue in a place of comfortable ignorance.

Too many times, we read the Bible through the lens of our own culture’s beliefs without questioning. Our culture is largely Feminist, atheistic, and selfish, and it can be hard to see past the currently accepted beliefs about children to what God actually says about this topic in His word. We have been influenced by Planned Parenthood’s philosophy more than we would like to acknowledge. This philosophy of controlling parenthood permeates our thinking to such a degree that Margaret Sanger has triumphed over us without our even realizing it.

But I invite you to challenge the common consensus.

Hopefully, this list of references from Genesis will be a jumping-off point that will aid those who are seriously interested in researching this very important issue from a biblical perspective.

Here is a sampling of some themes we will encounter in Genesis:

Be fruitful and multiply

This concept is repeated not only once, but many times. And not only is the phrase itself repeated, but the idea of God multiplying His favored, chosen people and causing them to be fruitful as a sign of His blessing is given much emphasis.

God makes nations great

Many Christians give this idea a perfunctory nod but fail to understand that when the Bible teaches this, it is essentialy claiming that God is the One Who controls population, increasing it (or decreasing it) at His will. (Being a “great nation” is connected with there being many people, in Genesis.) Logically, we must conclude from this that God is in control of conception, not us, no matter how much we ascribe this process to chance. It appears to us as chance, but it’s actually not, according to the Bible. If we think it’s all chance, we are thinking like atheists.

Of course, we can defy God and try to take control; but that only leads to less blessing, not more. When does defying God by not trusting and obeying Him ever lead to good? Genesis gives several examples of doing things the wrong way; we would be foolish to not learn from them.

God opens and closes the womb

The validity of this concept is revealed to us several times in this very first book of the Bible, laying the foundation for our understanding of God’s sovereignty over human life, a theme which is continued throughout the rest of Scripture.

If we really believed that God opens and closes the womb at His will, as taught in the Bible, we would not believe in the need for birth control. If God wants us to conceive, we will; if He doesn’t, we won’t. Simple. Simple, but it requires trust and a knowledge of what the Bible really says.

God’s plans involve not just us, but our offspring

At first glance, the above phrase seems totally non-extraordinary, but I’m not convinced we’ve really given it the thought it deserves. We live our lives thinking mainly about our own plans for ourselves, seeing only as far as the “foreseeable future.” However, God’s vision extends way beyond that!

Sometimes God’s blessings for our faithfullness will not be fully received by us (nor, perhaps, were they ever intended to be completely received by us), but will be passed down the line to our descendants–even those descendants whose existence we are currently unaware of. If we limit our offspring through birth control (in any of its many forms), we limit God’s blessing on our family line.

We also limit something else. God starts a work in our lives, but because we are mortal, we usually die before that work is completed. Our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. are the ones God will use to continue the work we aren’t able to complete because of our finiteness. Having the children God chooses to send us enables that work to continue on through them.

We see this happening in the lives of the patriarchs: God’s blessing on the life of the father gets passed down to the son, and then to the grandson. God furthermore reveals that His plans for their family spread out far beyond them and into the future, into the lives of the descendants they could not have known would exist, apart from having faith in God’s promise.

Honestly, how can we plan our own families with any degree of wisdom if we can’t even know the future? Only God knows the future; therefore, He is the One best trusted with this area of our lives.

Death and hardship are a part of life

The curse on humankind affects all of Adam and Eve’s descendants, including those who have faith in God. We see that even though God commands humans to be fruitful and mutiply and reveals that one of the big ways He blesses us is through giving us children, this does not eliminate suffering. Women still experience the pain of labor and even die sometimes in the process. This is seen as normal in our fallen world, and yet not a sign that we should give up having children, as many today would conclude under the same circumstances.

We modern Christians often believe in a soggy version of what God’s love means, thinking that if He loves us, He would never expect us to put up with anything we consider “beyond our ability to handle.” But this idea is just not supported by Scripture. The saints of old times are not treated like spoiled little children by God but are allowed to go through some very heart-wrenching trials–and yet, the lesson is that God is with them in the midst of those trials. Even more damaging to modern philosophy, the Bible shows in some cases how those trials are part of God’s good plan, though God’s people can’t see it at the time.

This concept is continued right on down through the next book of the Bible, Exodus, where we see God’s beloved, chosen people being made into slaves–and God doesn’t do anything to stop it. And yet, even in the middle of this impossible situation, His people continue to multiply! Amazingly, one baby boy who “shouldn’t have even been born” (and many modern Christians would certainly have used slavery as a “valid” excuse for not having conceived him in the first place), ends up unexpectedly being the one who leads them out of slavery and into freedom. I wonder if his parents knew what God was planning to do through baby Moses? I doubt it. How could they have? Pretty much just like the rest of us.

God’s plans fan out far into the future, way past our limited vision. We can’t outhink God, or even keep up with Him, when it comes to attempting to plan our own family; the best way to live life is to simply follow the pattern set forth in Scripture starting with Genesis and “be fruitful and multiply.”

My dear friends and readers: I am so excited to be able to make this list of references from Genesis available to you! Coming up next will either be references from Exodus or from Psalms. I’ll have to make up my mind about that soon.

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This pregnancy has gone very well so far (only about two more months to go . . . ). I am so happy to be able to announce that on the subject of nausea and vomiting, this 8th pregnancy has been the best! I have not thrown up at all (except one time at the very beginning when I had the flu, but that doesn’t count since it was due to a general sickness which our whole family was going through at the time).

Yes, I have been tired and uncomfortable. That’s to be expected, right? However, I am so relieved that everything else appears to be going normally and that at age 36, I’m not at all “high risk.” My last pregnancy had us worried about high blood sugar and high blood pressure (though it never got out of control, and everything worked out well enough for me to be able to birth at home). Amazingly, those problems have not even popped up with this baby! Some people might expect that the older one gets and the more pregnancies one has, the harder each one becomes. But, I think that my experience proves that is not always the case, thank the Lord!

I am so grateful for your patience in waiting for this post. I have not been able to keep up with blogging as much as I would like, since my usual “blog time” has been eaten up by an unavoidable “nap time.” And late nights are absolutely out of the question; I didn’t decide that–my body did for me, ha, ha!

Will I get the next list published before the baby is born, or will it have to wait until after? I’m not sure. Perhaps you may be seeing my birth story for baby number eight pop up in your feed first, who knows?

Thank you so much for your prayers and for keeping up with my blog, even though I’ve been very slow with writing posts and responding to comments and emails, lately. I appreciate you all a ton!

And I would certainly love to get your feedback on the list of references from Genesis, when you get the chance to go through them yourself. Please feel free to share your thoughts on any of the verses that jump out at you as especially relevant to our lives.

~Jessica