Five-minute study · Day 173 · Genesis 1
Genesis 1:27
A word worth stopping on: image צֶלֶם tselem
So God created man in his own image. Three times in one verse the word 'created' appears. The Hebrew poet is hammering on the point, repeating bara (created) like a bell struck three times. And the word for 'image' is tselem. In the world outside Israel, a tselem was a statue. Specifically, a royal statue planted in conquered territory to say: the king rules here, even when the king is not physically present.
Word study: image
- Hebrew
- צֶלֶם
- Pronounced
- tselem
- Strong's
- H6754
- Definition
- Image, likeness, statue, representation. Used for carved or cast representations, including idols and royal statues. From a root possibly meaning 'to cut, to carve.'
Tselem appears 17 times in the Hebrew Bible. In most of those occurrences, the word refers to physical representations: the golden images of tumors in 1 Samuel 6:5, the painted images of Chaldean soldiers in Ezekiel 23:14, the idol images destroyed by the faithful in Numbers 33:52. The word is concrete. It refers to something you can see, something that physically resembles the thing it represents.
BDB defines tselem as 'image, likeness,' from an assumed root meaning 'to cut off, to carve.' The physical connotation matters. When Genesis says humans are made in God's tselem, the word carries tangible force. Humans are the visible representation of an invisible God. You can see the image. You cannot see the original.
Clines' study 'The Image of God in Man' traces the ancient Near Eastern background. Assyrian and Babylonian kings erected tselem statues throughout their empires. When Esarhaddon conquered Egypt, he set up his royal image at the border. The statue communicated: I am sovereign here. My authority extends to this place. My presence is mediated through this representation.
Genesis appropriates royal language and democratizes it. In Mesopotamia, only the king was the image of the god. The king alone represented divine authority on earth. Genesis 1:27 applies the title to every human being. Male and female, without distinction of rank or ethnicity, bear the tselem of God. The theological claim is staggering: every person you encounter is a royal statue of the living God, placed in creation to represent his authority and reflect his character.
Historical context · Second to first millennium BC
Royal Statues and Conquered Lands
Archaeology has uncovered hundreds of royal statues from the ancient Near East, each one serving the same political function. The statue represented the king's presence in territories he could not personally occupy. When the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III defeated a coalition at the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC, he erected his image at the site. The Kurkh Monolith, now in the British Museum, records his victories and functioned as a permanent assertion of authority.
The practice was universal. Egyptian pharaohs carved colossal statues at Luxor, Abu Simbel, and temple complexes across the Nile Delta. The four seated figures of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel, each over sixty feet tall, served the same purpose as a small tselem placed at a border: the king is here. His power governs this place.
The Tel Dan Stele, discovered in northern Israel in 1993, contains an Aramaic inscription from a king boasting about defeating the 'house of David.' Royal inscriptions and royal images worked together: the text announced the conquest, the statue maintained the claim.
Genesis takes this entire system and reframes it. God does not erect a stone image in creation. He makes living ones. Breathing, thinking, choosing, creating, speaking images placed across the earth to represent his rule. The image is a living, formed from dust and animated by divine breath. Every human being carries the same political and theological weight that an Assyrian king's statue carried at a border crossing.
For reflection
If every person is a tselem of God, a living royal statue representing divine authority, how does that change the way you treat the most difficult person in your life right now? Name them. Sit with what it means that they carry the same image you do.
The image is given, not earned. Behavior does not add or subtract it.
Sources: BDB Lexicon; Clines, 'The Image of God in Man'; Middleton, 'The Liberating Image'; ANET