Text: Isaiah 51:2-3 — "then I blessed him and multiplied him… He will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of the LORD"
OT Text Referred to: Genesis 1:28
Source: Anchor-Text Network — Genesis 1:28 (Beale, The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New Testament; Schnittjer, Old Testament Use of Old Testament)
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Redemptive-Historical Progression, Longitudinal Theme
Anchor Text: Gen 1:28 — The Adamic Commission
Significance: Genesis 1:28 joins blessing and multiplication — "God blessed them and said… be fruitful and multiply" — and that paired language travels through the Abrahamic covenant, where the commission narrows to one man whom God will make fruitful (Gen 12; 17). Isaiah 51:2 recalls exactly this link: "When I called him, he was but one; then I blessed him and multiplied him" — the Adamic-Abrahamic pattern of blessing-fruitfulness from a single seed. Isaiah then makes Abraham the pattern for Zion's eschatological restoration (v. 3): the LORD "will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of the LORD," with "joy and gladness… thanksgiving and melodious song." Two strands of the commission converge — the fruitfulness verbs and the Edenic spatial vision — applied to the comforting of post-exilic Zion. The barren, scattered remnant will multiply as Abraham did and bloom as Eden did, a redemptive-historical advance pointing to the new creation secured in Christ, the true Seed in whom all nations are blessed (Gal 3:16).