John, I’m afraid Genesis 1:27 was an error. I’ve corrected it to 1:28.

So the question is, To what extent is the ‘blessing’ of creation restricted to the injunction to fill the earth/land? Even if ‘And God blessed them’ refers back to verse 27, the main point would still appear to be that as man and woman they are blessed in their procreative capacity. We have the same blessing linked to the command to reproduce in verse 22.

I would probably argue that the command to be fruitful and multiply in effect establishes the conditions for the blessed and prosperous existence of humanity in the world - hence the continuation about having dominion over the earth and living things. Certainly in the Deuteronomic context blessing consists of more than numerical increase: it is the general well-being in the land of a people that keeps the commandments. So it doesn’t seem unreasonable to read Genesis 1:28 in the same way.

On the matter of recovering the image of the creator Colossians 3:9-10 is of particular relevance:

Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

Paul speaks of putting off the old ‘man’ or humanity (anthropos) and putting on the new humanity, which is being renewed with regard to knowledge (consciousness?) according to the image (eikona) of the one who created it. He then highlights a crucial aspect of what this renewed humanity means by saying that ‘Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all’ (Col. 3:11). Presumably it is merely accidental that he overlooks ‘male and female’ here, unlike in Galatians 3:28.