ris3n's Apologetics Codex

Passage

Genesis 1.26-27

Genesis 1:26-27, Imago Dei passage, image of God

Book: Genesis · NASB95

Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.' God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:26-27, NASB95)

The imago Dei passage. Two verses that ground Christian anthropology, the doctrine of human dignity, the pro-life argument, the case against materialist reductions of personhood, and the trinitarian-resonant plural ("Let Us make"). Across the codex this is the single most-cited verse for what a human being is and why it matters. Its theological weight is disproportionate to its 47 Hebrew words: take this passage away and the moral grammar of the entire biblical tradition collapses into convention.

Immediate context (±2 verses)

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ASV (ASV)

24. And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind: and it was so. 25. And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the ground after its kind: and God saw that it was good.

26. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27. And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

  1. And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. 29. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food: (Genesis 1:24-29, ASV)
WEB (WEB)

24. God said, “Let the earth produce living creatures after their kind, livestock, creeping things, and animals of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. 25. God made the animals of the earth after their kind, and the livestock after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. God saw that it was good.

26. God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27. God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.

  1. God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29. God said, “Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree, which bears fruit yielding seed. It will be your food. (Genesis 1:24-29, WEB)
KJV (KJV)

24. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

  1. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. moveth: Heb. creepeth 29. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. bearing: Heb. seeding seed yielding: Heb. seeding seed (Genesis 1:24-29, KJV)
YLT (YLT)

24. And God saith, 'Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind:' and it is so. 25. And God maketh the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, and God seeth that [it is] good.

26. And God saith, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, and let them rule over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the heavens, and over cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that is creeping on the earth.' 27. And God prepareth the man in His image; in the image of God He prepared him, a male and a female He prepared them.

  1. And God blesseth them, and God saith to them, 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the heavens, and over every living thing that is creeping upon the earth.' 29. And God saith, 'Lo, I have given to you every herb sowing seed, which [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which [is] the fruit of a tree sowing seed, to you it is for food; (Genesis 1:24-29, YLT)

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Setting

  • Speaker: Moses (traditional authorship) / narrator
  • Audience: Israelite congregation post-Exodus
  • Location: narrative set on the sixth day of creation
  • Time period: events at creation; composed c. 1446-1406 BC

Theological reading

The passage sits at the climax of Genesis 1's six-day creation account. Five times prior, God speaks and a category of creature emerges; only here does the narrative pause for divine deliberation ("Let Us make") and a doubled act-statement ("in Our image, according to Our likeness"). The literary signal is unmistakable: humanity is the apex and the qualitative outlier of the creation week.

Two Hebrew terms carry the doctrinal weight. Tselem (H6754 - tselem), translated "image," is the same word used elsewhere for cultic statues and royal monuments: in ANE convention a king would erect his tselem in conquered territory to declare ownership and presence. Demuth (H1823 - demuth), translated "likeness," softens any crude representational reading; humanity is not a literal idol but a created resemblance. Together the pairing locates each human being as God's authorized representative on earth and as bearer of a likeness that subsists across all ethnicities, abilities, and life stages.

Scholarly debate over the imago's referent runs in three lanes. The substantive view (Augustine, Aquinas, much of the Reformed tradition) locates the image in human rational faculties, especially reason and free will. The relational view (Karl Barth, John Zizioulas) reads "male and female He created them" in v. 27 as load-bearing: the image is constituted in relational personhood that mirrors trinitarian relations. The functional view (J. Richard Middleton, John Walton) takes the ANE-king parallel as primary: image-bearing is vocational, the dominion mandate of v. 26-28. Most contemporary Christian anthropologists treat the three as complementary rather than competing.

Apologetically the passage is load-bearing for the Moral Argument family, the case against materialist anthropology, the pro-life argument, and the Christian critique of racial hierarchy. If human worth is conferred by divine image-bearing rather than by capacity or productivity, then the unborn, the disabled, the elderly, and the cognitively impaired bear identical dignity to anyone else. Take imago Dei away and human-rights talk has to be grounded somewhere else, with notoriously thin results. The plural "Let Us" further functions as one of the earliest OT-internal hints toward trinitarian theism, though the verse alone is not decisive.

Key words

  • H1254 - bara, bara (Strong's H1254). The verb "to create," used in Genesis exclusively with God as subject; signals creation ex nihilo when paired with "the heavens and the earth."
  • H6754 - tselem, tselem (Strong's H6754). "Image" with ANE royal-representation overtones; carries the substantive theological load of the verse.
  • H1823 - demuth, demuth (Strong's H1823). "Likeness"; qualifies tselem against crude idolatry-style readings.
  • H0120 - adam, adam (Strong's H120). "Man" / "humanity"; here a collective for the species, not yet a proper name.
  • H0430 - elohim, elohim (Strong's H430). The grammatically-plural divine name whose verb-agreement here ("Let Us") generates the Trinity-anticipation reading.

Theological themes

  • Imago Dei. Every human being bears the image of God by virtue of being human, prior to and independent of any acquired capacity, achievement, or social status. Pro-life argument, anti-eugenics argument, anti-slavery argument, and disability theology all draw on this directly.
  • Vocational dominion. "Let them rule" (v. 26) commissions humanity as creation's stewards rather than its tyrants; the parallel "subdue" in v. 28 has to be read against the seventh-day rest that defines the goal of dominion as flourishing, not exploitation.
  • Male and female together. The image is not located in maleness or femaleness severally but in the human pair; the verse is a load-bearing premise for biblical sexual ethics and complementarity discussions without thereby legitimating gender hierarchy.
  • Trinitarian anticipation. The plural "Let Us make" is not univocally trinitarian (the plural of majesty and the divine-council readings remain live), but on the canonical-trinitarian reading the verse joins a small set of Genesis 1-3 hints that retrospectively cohere with NT trinitarian disclosure.
  • Anti-materialist anthropology. If human worth is conferred at the level of kind, no reductive account that defines persons by neural complexity or social utility can ground the equal dignity claim Christianity rests on.

Cross-references

  • Genesis 1.27, the second-verse focus on "male and female"; central to gender-and-image discussions.
  • Genesis 5.1, restates the imago after the fall; image-bearing survives Eden.
  • Genesis 9.6, the post-flood prohibition on murder grounded explicitly in tselem; image-bearing is the basis of the OT's anti-homicide framework.
  • James 3.9, James's rebuke against cursing fellow humans because they are "made in the likeness of God"; NT confirmation that the imago persists post-fall.
  • Colossians 1.15-20, Christ as "the image of the invisible God"; the Pauline Christological recasting where Jesus is the true and full image humanity was made to be.

See also

  • Imago Dei, the dedicated concept hub.
  • Adam and Eve Historicity, the question of whether the verse describes a literal first pair.
  • Trinity, for treatment of the plural "Let Us" within trinitarian theology.
  • Substance Dualism, the anthropological position the imago doctrine has historically supported.
  • Logos Christology, for the Colossians 1 / Hebrews 1 recasting of Christ as the true image.

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Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

  • ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
  • WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
  • KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
  • YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.