Lexicon

H6754 - tselem

Strong's: H6754 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: tseh'-lem Part of speech: masculine noun (probably from an unused root meaning "to shade / cast a shadow") Frequency: ~17 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible LXX equivalent: εἰκών (G1504 - eikon, "image") Aramaic cognate: צְלֵם (tselem, in the Aramaic of Daniel)

Semantic range (Brown-Driver-Briggs)

Image, likeness, statue, a physical representation of something else, often an idol or a carved statue (Numbers 33:52; 1 Samuel 6:5, 11; 2 Kings 11:18; Ezekiel 7:20; 16:17; Amos 5:26; Daniel 2:31-35; 3:1-18).
Image (as a representational pattern), the constitutive sense in Genesis 1.26-27, Genesis 5:3, Genesis 9.6, humanity made bə-tsalmēnu ("in our image"); Seth begotten bi-dmuto kə-tsalmo ("in his likeness, after his image").
Phantom, shadow, illusion (rare, derived from the etymological "shadow" sense), Psalm 39:6 (ṣelem, "a mere phantom"); Psalm 73:20.

Theological force, imago Dei

Tselem is the technical OT noun for the image of God in humanity, the load-bearing lexeme of the doctrine of the imago Dei. It appears five times in three Genesis texts, and in each place is paired with H1823 - demuth (demuth, "likeness") so closely that the two words function as a single concept-cluster:

Genesis 1.26, "Let Us make man in Our tselem, according to Our demuth"
Genesis 1.27, bə-tselem used three times: "God created man in His own tselem, in the tselem of God He created him; male and female He created them"
Genesis 5:1-3, God made man bi-dmuth God; Seth was begotten bi-dmuth kə-tsalmo, humanity now reproduces its own image-bearing line
Genesis 9.6, the post-flood capital-punishment statute: "whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the tselem of God He made man"

The doctrinal claims compressed into the lexeme:

1. Universality. The imago is predicated of "ha-adam" (humanity / humankind), not of a sub-class. Male and female are both said in v. 27 to be created bə-tselem. This grounds equal human dignity across sex, race, age, and ability, a foundational point for Christian anthropology and ethics (cf. Christian Ethics).

2. Persistence after the Fall. Genesis 9.6 is decisive: God commands capital punishment for murder because the victim still bears the tselem, post-Eden. The image is marred but not erased by the Fall. This is the OT warrant for the patristic distinction (Irenaeus) between image (constitutive, retained) and likeness (dynamic, lost and to-be-restored).

3. Reproductive transmission. Genesis 5:3 states that Seth is begotten in Adam's likeness / image, humanity passes the imago down generationally. This is why the Genesis 9 statute applies to all post-flood humans, not only to the unfallen.

4. Ontological warrant for human dignity. The imago is the ground of the prohibition of bloodshed (Gen 9:6) and of the dignity of speech (James 3:9, "with [the tongue] we curse men, who have been made in the demuth of God"). The lexeme does ethical work: it is what makes murder a category-error against God, not merely against a fellow creature.

5. Christological convergence. The NT carries the imago doctrine forward via G1504 - eikon: Christ is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1.15; 2 Corinthians 4:4); humans are re-conformed to that image in sanctification (Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Colossians 3:10). Christ is both the original imago (eternal Son) and the restored imago (incarnate model).

Idolatry, tselem as forbidden image

The same lexeme that names humanity-as-divine-image is the standard OT word for forbidden idolatrous images, a pointed irony the prophets exploit. Humanity is the only legitimate tselem of God; carved tselemim of pagan deities are precisely the inversion of the imago calling. The polemical contrast:

Numbers 33:52, destroy the tsalmōt (carved images) of the Canaanites upon entering the land
1 Samuel 6:5, 11, the Philistines fashion tsalmē of the tumors and mice as a guilt offering
2 Kings 11:18, Athaliah's Baal tsalmēhem are smashed
Ezekiel 7:20; 16:17, Israel makes tsalmē zakar (male images) for prostitution
Amos 5:26, "you carried Sikkuth your king and Kiyyun your tsalmēkem"
Daniel 2:31-35; 3:1-18, Nebuchadnezzar's vision-image and golden tselem (Aramaic), humanity setting up its own self-image as worship-object

The prophet's logic: the only authorized tselem of God is the human being. To carve another is to claim divine-image-making prerogative for oneself, which is idolatry. (This is also part of the OT warrant for the Decalogue's second commandment.)

Patristic / scholarly note

The Septuagint renders tselem with εἰκών (eikōn) and demuth with ὁμοίωσις (homoiōsis) in Genesis 1:26, the LXX rendering that licenses the patristic image / likeness distinction. Irenaeus (Against Heresies IV.16.2; V.6.1, c. AD 180) treats tselem / eikōn as the constitutive endowment retained after the Fall and demuth / homoiōsis as the dynamic Spirit-conformity that was lost and is restored in Christ. Athanasius (On the Incarnation 11-13, c. AD 318) takes the marring of the imago as the rationale for the Incarnation: only the original Image, becoming flesh, can re-stamp the marred image-bearers. Augustine (De Trinitate 12-14, c. AD 410) locates the imago in the soul's threefold structure (memory, intellect, will), reading bə-tsalmēnu (with the plural pronoun) as a Trinitarian signature.

Modern Hebrew scholarship (Westermann, Genesis 1-11; Wenham, WBC Genesis 1-15; Middleton, The Liberating Image) has emphasized the royal-functional dimension: in Ancient Near Eastern texts, kings erect ṣalmu (Akkadian cognate) of themselves in subdued provinces to assert presence and authority. Genesis polemically democratizes this royal-imagery onto all humanity: every human (not just kings) is YHWH's representative-image deployed in the earth-province. This functional reading reinforces rather than displaces the ontological reading: the imago entails both constitution (what the human is) and vocation (what the human is for, to represent God's rule, Genesis 1:28).

In contemporary apologetics and ethics, the tselem doctrine is the foundation of pro-life argumentation (the unborn bear the imago), anti-discrimination argumentation (no human group is sub-imago), and the case against materialist anthropologies that reduce humans to their genetic substrate (Hoekema, Created in God's Image, 1986; Anthony Bradley; Carl Henry).

Verses in this codex

See Obsidian's backlinks pane for every verse page linking here. Top-cited references using tselem: Genesis 1.26, Genesis 1.27, Genesis 9.6.