A comparison of Gen.1:26-28 with
5:1 suggests that there is no essential difference between the two words here.
This does not mean that the two words are exactly synonymous but they do seem
to communicate a similar idea. The word dĕmût seems to be a more abstract word. It comes from a root
that means "to be like, to resemble." Ezekiel frequently uses the
term in describing various visions and the effect of his using the word in
describing the strange things that he saw is to suggest that while the thing
seen resembled something it was in fact unlike the only things compare it (e.g.
Ezek. 1:5, 10, 16, 22, 26, 28;8:2; 10:1, 10, 21, 22). The described by dĕmût does not seem to be
confined to a physical one since Isa. 13:4 talks about "the sound of a
tumult on the mountains like (dĕmût ) many people." It is interesting to note that a
cognate of the word is used in the Aramaic inscription from Tell Fekheriye
(lines 1 and 15) and the word seems to be a synonym of ṣelem, "image," which
is also used in the inscription (lines 12 and 16) (see BA 45 (1982),
137-38 and MDOG 113, p. 113). The word dĕmût is used in 2 Chr. 4:3 of
the figures of oxen that supported the molten sea in front of the temple, and
thus the word is used in a similar way in at least one other instance in the
Bible though apparently without the negative connotations associated with the
word ṣelem.
The idea that man is somehow like
God or the gods is expressed in Mesopotamia in the stories about man's creation
from the flesh and blood of a god (Atraḫasis and Enuma Elish) and Miller (JBL 91,
296-97) makes the interesting suggestion that two originally independent ideas
(i.e. man's likeness to God and man’s kingly position) may have been combined
in these Genesis passages. Thus it is possible that an idea about the creation
of man from Israel's Mesopotamian background was combined with an Egyptian idea
to produce the account in Gen. 1:26-28. (Edward Mason Curtis, “Man as the Image
of God in Genesis in the Light of Ancient Near Eastern Parallels” [PhD
Dissertation; University of Pennsylvania, 1984], 377 n. 112)
