Genesis 1:28's command to "replenish the earth" tells Adam and Eve to refill or restock a planet that had already been populated once and emptied out.

Genesis 1:28 (KJV) reads: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it." The Hebrew verb behind it, male' (מָלֵא), just means "fill": the same word used for filling a cup or a room, with no notion of "again." When the KJV translators chose "replenish" (from Old French replenir, from Latin replere), it was simply the era's word for "fill completely"; it hadn't yet picked up the modern sense of restocking something used up.

This case gets cited in young-earth arguments claiming "re-plenish" proves a prior population wiped out before Genesis 1. That reading leans on a sense "replenish" acquired later in English, not the sense it carried in 1611 or the sense of the Hebrew word it translates. Both point to "fill," not "refill." That's a real, contested case rather than one This record settles theologically.