Image and likeness: background and early readers (1:26–28)

Says God says, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness” (Gen 1:26, BSB). The Hebrew is נַעֲשֶׂה אָדָם בְּצַלְמֵנוּ כִּדְמוּתֵנוּ (na‘aseh adam betsalmenu kidmutenu). אָדָם (adam) has no article and means humankind, and the BSB’s capitals for divine pronouns are an English convention. Then “God created man in His own image” (1:27) and told them to “fill the earth and subdue it” (1:28). Adam later “had a son in his own likeness, after his own image” (5:3), and 9:6 grounds the penalty for murder in the image. Ps 8:5 says God “crowned him with glory and honor.”

Philo places the likeness in the mind (Opif. 69) and explains “Let us” as God taking assistants (Opif. 72–75). Irenaeus distinguishes the image, given in human nature, from the likeness, received through the Spirit (Haer. 5.6.1). Keil (1868) notes that the fathers took “We” “almost unanimously” as indicating the Trinity, and moderns as a plural of majesty, self-address, or address to angels. He rejects the angelic and reflexive readings and takes it as a plural of majesty holding the truth beneath the trinitarian view (Pentateuch 1:61–62, n64–65). These are their views.

Uncertain What the image consists in (capacities, relationship, royal representation, or a combination) is open, and so is whether the two nouns differ in meaning. Whether the wording draws on ancient royal language about images is also debated. No lean is taken here, and this background does not fix the meaning of 1:26–27.