Page 27 - ADAM IN GENESIS

God saw that they were good for fulfilling their purpose in verse 25. By this point in time
on Day 6, the entire planet is filled with plants and living creatures both on land and in
the sea. The earth that was formless and void in verse 2 now has form and is filled. God is
now prepared to create one last thing. It is to be the climax of the entire Creation account.
It is to be God's most special and personal component of His Creation. It is the creature
that gets the most attention in the narrative and that receives the greatest blessing and
privilege in all Creation. It is the human being. Only after the special creation of the
human could God deem His Creation complete and very good.
The text is extremely clear on the intimate process in which He created the first humans.
In verse 26 we have another wayyomer elohim. This time He says Let Us make man in
Our image, after Our likeness. Some questions are now raised. Why the switch from the
jussive (Let be) to the cohortative (Let Us)? Who is with God when He says Us? What is
meant by image and likeness and are they the same?
First, just as the jussive conjugation is simply an imperative in the third person, the
cohortative is a command in the first person. The Creator switches to the first person to
show His intimate connection to this particular created thing. It shows His personal desire
to get up close and take extra care to create this being just right, which as we will see
means in the very image of Himself.
Second, who is the Us? This has been discussed at great length. The options are 1.) There
are multiple God's doing the creating, 2.) He is referring to all the created beings (angels)
who are with Him or 3.) He is referring to Himself in a way consistent with the Christian
doctrine of the Trinity (One God in three Persons: Father, Son and Spirit). The entirety of
Scripture that follows is very clear that God is God alone and there is no equal, so that
rules out the first. Similarly, since nowhere in Scripture is it said that the angels or any
other created being were made in the image of God, the second can be ruled out because
of the phrasings Our image and Our likeness. Since we have already seen the Spirit of
God (verse 2), the logical interpretation is that the multiple Persons of the singular God
are in view here.
Lastly, what are the image (Heb. tselem) and the likeness (Heb. demuth) of God and are
they the same thing? Collins has an excellent write-up on this (Genesis 1-4, pp. 61-67) so
we will not belabor the point here. Basically from the usage throughout Scripture the two
terms are interchangeable. Also the LXX translates demuth as homoiosis and eikon
interchangeably in this passage and in Gen. 5:1, 3. According to TWOT God's image
obviously does not consist in man's body which was formed from earthly matter, but in
his spiritual, intellectual, moral likeness to God from which his animating breath came
(p.767).
To summarize, when God made man He made something special. He started by taking
ordinary clay and made a body, but He also then got up close and personal and created
(bara-v.27) him in His own image. This, as we have seen, is very different than any other
created thing in this account. Our moral, spiritual and intellectual being is what truly
separates man from any other creature. This image we bear completely rules out the
possibility of chance evolution. It is the signature mark of our Creator.
This man (Heb. adam), and all mankind (based on the third person plural form of the
verb), was to have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and
over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the
earth (v. 26). This verb radah (to have dominion) occurs 21 times in the OT and