26 God said, “Let
us make humans in our image, similar to us. Let them govern the sigh of the
sea, the birds of the sky, the domestic animals, over all the earth, and everything
that crawls on the ground.”
27 So God
created the earth creature in his image.
In the image of God he created him,
Male and female he created them. (David L. Petersen, Genesis [The
Old Testament Library; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2025], 31)
Although the Priestly writer uses the divine council as an image for
divine plurality, that writer also uses the diction of an “image,” a physical
representation, to convey the character of the similarity between God and
humanity. Just as a sculptor can model clay to make it appear like a specific
human being, so in some way humanity will be similar to the deity, though again
this is an analogy. The Priestly writer reuses this same language in Gen 5:3 to
describe the way in which a son can be like his father, though here a real
physical reality is in play. The more metaphorical usage in the ancient Near East,
according to which a king is an image of God, is similar to that in Gen 1. The
word translated here “similar to” pushes in this same direction, a more general
notion of similarity that could be physical (e.g., Isa 40:18), but could refer
to a nonphysical correspondence. The notion of humanity as being in the image
of God, as would be a king, and the command to govern give this text a
distinctly political cast. Humanity is to serve as a divinely appointed governor
or regal figure. As noted earlier, the notion of a governance appears twice in
Gen 1; astral objects, the sun and moon, and humanity are both given authority over
others: the former over day and night, the latter over floral and faunal life. (David
L. Petersen, Genesis [The Old Testament Library; Louisville, Ky.:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2025], 35)
