The meaning is quite clear, and needs little elaboration. God created two humans of different sexes so that they could reproduce. He ordered them to have children and start to populate the world with more humans. There is obviously a limit to the number of children that Eve could give birth to. One might safely assume that God's instruction to Adam and Eve were also binding to their children, grandchildren, even down to the present generation.

The only family/marriage structure that allows procreation by the spouses is made up of one or more men and one or more women. Two women cannot procreate together with the current level of scientific knowledge. Two men cannot have children. God's intent therefore is for marriage to be limited to opposite sexes. God did not initially create one man and multiple women, or one women and multiple men, or multiple men and women. God's intent therefore was to have opposite-sex pairs of humans marry and create families consisting of one man and one woman. There is no room in God's plan for same-sex marriage (SSM). SSM should therefore not be legalized as they have been by rogue courts and legislatures in the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada and the state of Massachusetts.

Some religious conservatives use the memorable phrase: "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." Although it was intended as a catchy slogan, it points to the prohibition of SSM within Genesis, and God's intent that each man and woman should pair off in marriage, and produce children by merging the husband's sperm with the wife's ova.

A common liberal Christian viewpoint:

Understanding biblical text today is a three step process:

Step 1: Understand what the text meant to the author(s) at the time it was originally written: The ancient Babylonian Pagan priest or theologian [see below] who wrote the original version of this creation story knew that he was creating a myth by using his own imagination. He wrote down his best guess of how the Gods might have created the Earth, the rest of the universe, and all its life forms. The ancient Hebrew priest who copied the Pagan Babylonian myth, with some modifications, may have believed that it came from God. But we know today that it was written by people who lived in a pre-scientific world. The story is a myth which should be mined for its spiritual content, but not regarded as an actual account of origins.

Genesis 1 has God creating the first male and female humans, and commanding them to fill up the Earth with sufficient humans to subdue nature. The story assumes that God's plan was to create two humans and then have them reproduce in large numbers over many generations. It is a beautiful religious myth, but not a description of real events.

A religiously skeptical viewpoint:

Most liberal and mainline theologians and skeptics accept the Documentary Hypothesis: that the Pentateuch was written by a number of anonymous Hebrew authors who followed four different religious traditions. The Hypothesis asserts that the author of the creation story seen in the first verses of the Bible was an anonymous 6th Century BCE writer or group of writers of the priestly tradition (often referred to as "P"). "P" based his creation story on an earlier Pagan myth written by an anonymous writer in Babylon. This Babylonian creation myth is generally called by its first two words "Enuma Elish." According to archaeologists, it was originally written circa 1120 BCE. This was perhaps five centuries before Genesis was written. A surviving copy was only discovered in 1875 CE.

When comparing the Babylonian Pagan creation myth with Genesis 1:1 to 2:3, we see the identical events in the identical order:

	The initial start of darkness.
	The creation of light.
	The creation of a firmament (a metal dome over the earth which separates earth from heaven).
	The appearance of dry land.
	The creation of the sun, moon and stars.
	The creation of the first humans.
	God resting afterwards.