Inflected Variations
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; Genesis1:26a NASB
Image/likeness – We’ve spent enough time investigating the two Hebrew words used to describe God’s design for human beings. There are at least a dozen Today’s Word editions on this topic. But it is one of those verses that can be mined again and again for fresh insights, so let’s add another layer to this most critical verse. Maybe we’ll find more than one additional layer.
We start by noting that the image of God is found nowhere else in creation. In fact, anything else used to represent God’s image is expressly forbidden. In Man, and Man alone, is how God wants His image to be shown. That means if we want to see what God is like, we will have to look at human beings. And that is a great paradox. Most human beings don’t even come close to representing God’s image, as far as we are concerned. They aren’t perfect. They aren’t selfless. They aren’t eternally forgiving. They aren’t abounding in kindness, compassion, and exact judgment. We are more likely to side with Aquinas on this one. The Western thought:
God is precisely what Man isn’t.
But maybe we have fallen into a theological pit here. Maybe the biblical God really is represented best in imperfect Man, not because God is imperfect (although we should note that divine perfection is a Greek concept, not a Hebrew one), but because the real point of Man’s imperfection is its platform for exhibiting the intimate relationship between God and Man. When it comes to what it means to really be human:
In the Garden, Man does not need God.
And then there’s this: God’s image is not a noun. Yes, the word “image” is a noun, but when we carefully look at the way God represents Himself in the Bible, we come away with verbs. Even when God gives Moses His name at the site of the burning bush, the Paleo-Hebrew consonants paint a picture of action, not status. “I am who I am” isn’t quite right. The verbal form is something like “I will be who I will be.” Kind of. The point isn’t the proper translation. The point is that the name is a verb. In fact, the consonants of this name are really Hebrew vowels, something totally unique in language development. Here’s the implication for our verse in Genesis:
Man is intended to be a conjugation of the divine verb.
Maybe that’s enough to think about today.
Topical Index: image, likeness, human being, God’s name, verb, Genesis 1:26a
