Lexicon

H1823 - demuth

Strong's: H1823 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: dem-ooth' Part of speech: feminine noun (from H1819 damah, "to be like, resemble") Frequency: ~25 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible LXX equivalent: ὁμοίωσις (homoiōsis, "likeness") in Genesis 1:26 and Genesis 5:1; elsewhere εἰκών, ὁμοίωμα

Semantic range (Brown-Driver-Briggs)

Likeness, similitude, resemblance, the abstract noun naming a relation of similarity. Less concrete than tselem (a representational form/image); more relational ("X is like Y").
Pattern, model, what something is patterned after (2 Kings 16:10, Ahaz sends a demuth of the altar he saw in Damascus).
The thing-resembled-as-perceived, used in theophanic / visionary literature (Ezekiel) for what the prophet sees but can describe only as "like a likeness of."

Theological force

Demuth is the constant pairing-partner of H6754 - tselem in the imago Dei texts, and is the technical OT word for theophanic / apocalyptic resemblance-language, the lexeme prophets use when they have to describe what they have seen of God without committing to direct ontological claims about the divine essence.

Function 1, pair with tselem in the imago Dei

The two lexemes occur together in three constitutive texts:

Genesis 1.26, naʿaseh adam bə-tsalmēnu ki-dmutēnu, "let us make humanity in our tselem, according to our demuth"
Genesis 5:1-3, God made humanity bi-dmuth God; Seth was begotten bi-dmuth Adam kə-tsalmo
Ezekiel 1:5, 26, 28, the four living creatures' demuth of human form; the demuth of a throne; the demuth of human form upon the throne; the demuth of YHWH's kavod

The Genesis 1:26 bə-tsalmēnu / ki-dmutēnu pairing is synonymous parallelism in Hebrew poetic-legal style, the two prepositional phrases refer to the same divine intention, not two discrete categories. This is decisive for the proper exegesis: the patristic image / likeness distinction (Irenaeus's "image-retained vs. likeness-lost") reads dogmatic content into a Hebrew literary parallelism. Modern Hebrew exegesis (Westermann, Wenham, Sailhamer) consistently reads the two lexemes as mutually-glossing rather than referencing two distinct endowments.

That said, the lexemes are not perfectly identical:

tselem leans toward concrete representational form (statue, carved image, the human as visible representative)
demuth leans toward abstract relational similarity (resemblance, pattern, likeness)

In Genesis 1:26 the pair captures both registers at once: humans are tselem-elohim (concretely representative, the visible / functional manifestation of divine rule in the earth-domain) and demuth-elohim (relationally similar, patterned after God in the structure of agency, communion, moral capacity).

Function 2, apocalyptic / theophanic resemblance-language

Demuth is the prophet's vocabulary for describing visionary glimpses of God. Ezekiel 1 is the locus classicus, the noun appears six times in chapter 1 alone:

1:5, demuth of four living creatures (chayot)
1:10, demuth of their faces (each had four)
1:13, demuth of the living creatures, like burning coals
1:16, demuth of the wheels
1:22, over the heads of the chayot a demuth of an expanse
1:26, over the expanse a demuth of a throne; on the demuth of the throne, a demuth of human form (demuth kə-marʾeh adam)
1:28, hu marʾeh demuth kəvod-YHWH, "this was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of YHWH"

The recursive demuth-of-demuth construction is theologically deliberate. Ezekiel does not say he saw YHWH; he says he saw the appearance of the likeness of the glory of YHWH. The mediating term demuth preserves divine transcendence while licensing controlled prophetic disclosure: the prophet does see, but what he sees is mediated through resemblance, not through direct identification.

This same construction appears in:

Ezekiel 8:2, "a demuth kə-marʾeh of fire / of a man", another mediated theophany
Ezekiel 10:1, 10, 21-22, repeated demuth-language in the temple-vision
Daniel 10:16, kidmuth bənē adam, "like the demuth of human sons", Daniel describes the figure who touches him

The "Son of Man" tradition of Daniel 7:13 (Aramaic kə-bar enash, "like a son of man") inherits this demuth-vocabulary: an apocalyptic figure described by resemblance-language that is precisely like a human but not just a human, the very ambiguity Christ's "Son of Man" self-designation exploits.

Function 3, Christological convergence

Paul's use of G3667 - homoioma (the Greek lexeme that overlaps the demuth range) in Romans 8:3, en homoiōmati sarkos hamartias ("in the homoiōma of sinful flesh"), and Philippians 2:7, en homoiōmati anthrōpōn genomenos ("having become in the homoiōma of men"), preserves the controlled-resemblance register: Christ shares humanity in genuine likeness without sharing every feature (sin, in Romans 8:3). The resemblance-grammar of demuth / homoiōma lets Paul affirm full incarnation without affirming sinful identification.

Conversely Hebrews 7:15, kata tēn homoiotēta Melchisedek ("after the homoiotēs of Melchizedek"), uses cognate vocabulary to argue Christ's priesthood is patterned-after but exceeds the Melchizedek priesthood.

Notable verses

Genesis 1.26, ki-dmutēnu, paired with bə-tsalmēnu
Genesis 5:1-3, bi-dmuth elohim (1) and bi-dmuth Adam kə-tsalmo (3)
2 Kings 16:10, demuth ha-mizbēach (likeness of the altar), Ahaz sends a model
Isaiah 40:18, u-mah-demuth taʿarkhu lo, "to whom will you compare God? what demuth will you set up against Him?", the prophet's anti-idolatry challenge
Ezekiel 1:26-28, the demuth of human form upon the throne; the marʾeh demuth kəvod-YHWH
Ezekiel 10:1, 21-22, temple-vision demuth repetitions
Ezekiel 23:15, used negatively for Babylonian idol-imagery
Daniel 10:16, kidmuth bənē adam

Patristic / scholarly note

The patristic image / likeness distinction (Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.16.2; V.6.1, c. AD 180), image as constitutive endowment retained after the Fall, likeness as dynamic Spirit-conformity lost and to-be-restored, was made possible by the LXX's choice of eikōn for tselem and homoiōsis for demuth, which gave the Greek-fathers two distinct lexemes to allocate. Modern Hebrew scholarship (Westermann, Genesis 1-11, 1984; Wenham, Genesis 1-15 WBC, 1987; Middleton, The Liberating Image, 2005) generally regards the patristic distinction as theologically productive but exegetically anachronistic, Hebrew parallelism does not warrant the two-tier endowment doctrine.

The theophanic demuth-language has attracted significant attention in modern biblical theology. Christopher Rowland (The Open Heaven, 1982), Alan Segal (Two Powers in Heaven, 1977), Daniel Boyarin (The Jewish Gospels, 2012), and Michael Heiser (The Unseen Realm, 2015) trace a Second Temple Jewish tradition of a "second power in heaven" who is YHWH's visible manifestation, described precisely with demuth / kabod / Son-of-Man language, into the matrix from which NT christology emerges. The recursive demuth of Ezekiel 1:26 (a demuth of human form on a demuth of a throne) is for these scholars the beginning of a trajectory that runs through Daniel 7's "one like a son of man" approaching the Ancient of Days, into the NT's Iēsous Christos kyrios.

Verses in this codex

See Obsidian's backlinks pane for every verse page linking here. Top-cited references using demuth: Genesis 1.26, Genesis 5:1-3, Ezekiel 1:26-28 (when present).