No.9. An Examination of Gen. i. 26, 27.
Man as a “shadow” of the Lord and of His purpose.
We have seen that in the mystery of godliness, “God was manifest in the flesh”, and that in the person of Christ, the invisible God, condescended to the limitations of His creatures, and that Christ is a necessary Mediator by reason of the gulf that exists between Creator and all creatures, just as surely as He must be the Mediator because of the moral gulf that exists between sinful man and a righteous God. Instead, however, of commencing with the teaching of Scripture, that Christ was made in the likeness of man, we must start with the creation of man, to see how emphatic the Scriptures are that in the beginning, man was made in the likeness of God. Two things are stated in Gen. i. 26 “In our image, after our likeness”. How are these words to be understood? Delitzsch suggests that in the word ‘image’ we have the outline, and in the word ‘likeness’ we have the filling up of the outline, but upon close investigation it is difficult to understand in what way man was created in the outline of God and what the after “filling up of the outline of God” can mean. We must therefore turn once again to the fountain head of truth in order to obtain all the help we can by examining the usage of these two words and their equivalents in the N.T.
Tselem ‘image’. This Hebrew word occurs 17 times in the O.T. and is translated ‘image’ every time, except in Psa. xxxix. 6 where it is rendered ‘in a vain shew’ (margin an image). The Chaldee tselem occurs also 17 times, and these references are confined to the book of Daniel. In every occurrence the Chaldee word is rendered ‘image’ except in Dan. iii. 19 where the AV. reading is ‘form’. This word tselem is allied with tsel ‘a shadow’. It is used not only in a literal sense, as ‘a shadow from the heat’, ‘the shadow of a cloud’ (Isa. xxv. 4, 5), but in various figurative ways, as for example:
“All my members are as a shadow” (Job xvii. 7).
“Our days upon earth are a shadow” (Job viii. 9).
In combination with the Hebrew word for ‘death’ we have the word tsalmaveth, translated throughout the A.V. by the words ‘the shadow of death’. There can be no doubt in the mind of any who take the trouble to examine the word, its cognates and its usage, that the primary meaning of the word translated ‘image’ in Gen. i. 26 is ‘shadow’.
Let us now turn our attention to the word translated “likeness”, the Hebrew word demuth. This word comes from damah ‘to be like’. “Man is like to vanity” (Psa. cxliv. 4). “I have compared thee, O my love” (Song i. 9). “I have . . . . . used similitudes, by the ministry of the prophets” (Hosea xii. 10).
Demuth itself occurs more frequently in the prophecy of Ezekiel than in the rest of the O.T. where it is translated ‘likeness’, and is chiefly used of the “four living creatures”, the cherubim.
In that daring blasphemy of the king of Babylon, as recorded by Isaiah, we catch a glimpse of the intention of the word, as used in Gen. i. 26:
“Thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; . . . . . I will be like the Most High” (Isa. xiv. 13, 14).
There are many challenging passages in the O.T. Scriptures regarding this matter of comparison with the Most High.
“Who in heaven can be compared unto the Lord? Who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the Lord?” (Psa. lxxxix. 6).
“To whom will ye liken Me, and make Me equal, and compare Me, that we may be like?” (Isa. xlvi. 5).
The daring assumption of Babylon is the blasphemy of Antichrist, and to quote a passage dealing with another circumstance we can say:
“And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth” (Rev. v. 3),
can be found worthy to be compared with the Most High. Yet, just as in Rev. v. the tears of John are stayed as he learns that the Lion of the tribe of Judah was worthy to open the seven sealed book, so the testimony of the Gospels and the Epistles reveal that in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in Him alone, may be found the answer to the challenge of Psa. lxxxix. 6 and of Isa. xlvi. 5. There is One, Who rightly ascended into heaven, whose throne is exalted above the stars of God. There is One Who thought it not robbery to be upon equality with God. There is One Who is the Image of the Invisible God, the Form of God, and the express Image or character of His substance. He is made known to us in Phil. ii., in Col. i., in Heb. i. and in John i.
The Lord Jesus Christ is “The Likeness” after Whom Adam was created. While it has always been a difficulty to interpret the image and the likeness of Gen. i. 26 on the physical plane, because God is spirit, the difficulty ceases when we realize that the “Image” is the “shadowing forth” for which honour Adam was created, and the ‘likeness’ according to which he was created, was the likeness of Him Who had form and shape before His incarnation, and was destined in the fullness of time to be made flesh, to be found in fashion as a man, to be made even in the ‘likeness’ of sinful flesh.
Man’s hope in the Lord is not exclusively upon the plane of spirit. In the resurrection the exchange of the earthly image for the heavenly image is defined as the exchange of corruption for incorruption, of mortality for immortality, and even though the resurrection body of some will be a heavenly and a spiritual body, they will be bodies nevertheless, and not spirits. So, in Gen. v. we read:
“In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him . . . . . and Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image” (Gen. v. 1, 3).
There can be no doubt that Seth, the son of Adam not only resembled Adam his father in mind and spirit, but in body also. In Phil. iii. we have the pledge concerning the body, while in Col. iii. we have the insistence upon the mind, neither the one nor the other being a contradiction, but rather a presentation of complete truth.
“Who shall change this body of our humiliation that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body” (Phil. iii. 21).
That is the pledge regarding the renewal of the ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ so far as the body is concerned.
“And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him” (Col. iii. 10).
It will be remembered that in explanation as it were of the intention of the Creator, the words “let them have dominion” immediately follow the words “in ourimage, after our likeness”. This dominion first exercised over fish, fowl and beast, is to extend until some at least of Adam’s sons, shall reign with Christ in that supernal glory “far above all”. It will be remembered that the cherubim are described as having four faces, that of a lion, an ox, a man and an eagle. Adam, who had lost the dominion entrusted to him, would see in the symbolic cherubim at the gate of Paradise, God’s pledge that this dominion should be restored.
As a parallel with this suggested meaning of the word cherub, we might place the name of the Archangel. Michael is simply mi ‘who’ Kha ‘like’ El ‘God’, “Who is like God?”
We have covered a deal of ground in our endeavour to attain to some Scriptural understanding of the meaning and intention of the words of Gen. i. 26, and we earnestly commend every reader not only to re-read the evidence submitted, but to supplement it by a personal examination of all the occurrences of the key words, so that the matter may be given the fullest examination. Adam was a ‘shadow’ only, just like the typical sacrifices. A “shadow of good things to come” indeed, but “not the very image” (Heb. x. 1), and just as Christ sets aside the ‘shadows’ of the sacrificial law, by coming in the flesh, and offering Himself, so as “the second Man” and “the last Adam” he sets aside the frail type, and is revealed as THE IMAGE of the invisible God, in Whose likeness it is the Divine will that every one of the redeemed shall one day be fashioned.
The wonder will grow as we allow the truth to enter, and the glory of the goal of the ages, focused as it is in the idea of one day being conformed to the image and likeness of the Son of God, will enable us to appreciate perhaps as never before, what lies behind and what leads up to the words,
“That God may be all in all”.
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