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Rulers of the Land - Image of God E1
124 Plays1 year ago
In the ancient world, “god’s image” was a title a king took to show his relationship to a god and demonstrate his authority to rule. Idols are also called images of gods, acting as representative mediators between the gods they represent and the people. Genesis uses this 'image of God' language in a new way to demonstrate something remarkable about God’s relationship with humanity and our purpose in God’s creation.
Resources Referenced: The Unseen Realm by Michael Heiser, God’s Kingdom through God’s Covenants by Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum.
Interlude Music: Glorious by Loving Caliber https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/zlcNnFTDsT/
Theme Song: Believe by Posthumorous. https://linktr.ee/posthumorous
For more fun, check out reparadigmed.com.
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Transcript
Introduction to Re-Paradigm Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Happy New Year to everyone. Thanks for starting year 2024 with the Re-Paradigm podcast.
Genesis 1 and 2: The Image of God
00:00:05
Speaker
Today we're starting a series on the image of God and our discussion is surrounding Genesis chapters 1 and 2, the foundational texts for human identity.
00:00:27
Speaker
God said, let us make humanity in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the skies and over the livestock and over all of the land and over every creeping thing that creeps on the land. So God created humanity in his image.
00:00:43
Speaker
In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.
Identity in God's Image
00:00:47
Speaker
And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the land, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the skies, and over every living thing that moves on the land. And God said,
00:00:59
Speaker
Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the land, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food, and to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the skies, and to everything that creeps on the land, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food, and it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
Implications of Being God's Image
00:01:22
Speaker
This is sort of the fundamental identity claim for human beings in the Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, that humans are made in or as the image of God. This is from Genesis 1, 26 through 31. This is the very first thing we hear about how or why God made people.
00:01:41
Speaker
Yeah, so we're going to do a short little series. You're just talking about the image of God and some of the implications of it. This series could turn into everything. You could almost wedge every topic, ethical issue, theological issue, you know, anthropological issue into image of God. Oh, sure. Anything related to humanity is in some way going to be related back to this idea.
Theology of 'Let Us Make Humanity'
00:02:01
Speaker
which tends to be everything, because we're humans. But we decided to at least just outline a little bit the identity of image bearing and then some of the implications, but not all of them, not try to be super robust here. So we'll try to be pretty broad here. Have a couple episodes on this.
00:02:18
Speaker
And it'll be really fun. So let's walk through that text again and make some notes before we go on and look at the ancient Near Eastern background to image of God. So in verse 26, God said, let us make humanity in our image. The first thing you notice there is let us make, it's like who are the us? I thought God is creating all things here and now there's more than just God existing. Yeah. And then in verse 27, it's so God created humanity in his own image.
00:02:45
Speaker
Right, so the focus is upon God, but why in 26 is it saying, let us make humanity in our image? What's the plural there? Yeah, that's a good question. I've definitely heard this referred to as the Trinity.
00:02:59
Speaker
Right, which I mean is theoretically possible. A lot of people in the Christian tradition have taken it that way or read that back into the text. I think it's extremely unlikely that the author meant that because the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament never reveals the Trinity.
00:03:15
Speaker
or a plurality of persons in the Godhead. And so there would be a very obvious meaning to this plural pronoun, the us, and that would be the other divine or spiritual beings that exist that the Hebrews would assume God also created, but they're just not recorded in Genesis 1. So Genesis 1 is not apparently a comprehensive account of when and how God created everything.
00:03:41
Speaker
because it doesn't talk about when and how he created these other spiritual beings. The ancients would call them gods. We call them angels and demons. Seraphim, cherubim, all of that kind of gets lumped in there.
00:03:52
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah.
Divine Council and 'Elohim' Discussion
00:03:53
Speaker
Yeah. So the Hebrews had this understanding of God having this divine council, this council of other spiritual beings who are not him. They are not the self-existent greatest conceivable being. They are created beings, but they're spiritual beings. They're Elohim, the Hebrew word for God. That's why the ancients would probably just call them gods. We tend to reserve the English word God for the greatest conceivable being, the being that created all that exists, Yahweh.
00:04:22
Speaker
The Hebrews used the word Elohim to refer to these other creatures too. Okay. So it's not like polytheism in the way that we normally think of it. There's the one kind of big God and then these other smaller divine beings that it just so happens we would tend to translate using the word gods. Yeah, exactly. There's a reason why the Hebrews called Yahweh the most high Elohim, the most high God. You don't have a most high of something if there's not other things in that category,
Translation of 'Adam', 'Tselem', and 'Demut'
00:04:50
Speaker
in that list. Oh, sure.
00:04:51
Speaker
Yeah, the late, great Dr. Michael Heizer has a good book that I recommend, if this is kind of a new idea, called The Unseen Realm, and talks about a lot of these things. So let us, let us make humanity in our image. So apparently these other spiritual beings are also the image of God in some way, which it won't be all that surprising as we talk about what this means to be in the image of God. It's not surprising to learn that these other spiritual beings also share that in some way.
00:05:18
Speaker
So, let us make humanity in our image. And I'm translating Adam there as humanity because that's what Adam means. It's not a proper name yet. You know, in Genesis 2, it starts to be used as a proper name for a guy, the first man. But here, it's just the Hebrew word for humanity. That's why, you know, English translations in the past said, let us make man. Well, they still do, I think. I guess you can still say man to refer to men and women or humanity. I think humanity would just be the more normal way to say it. Sure.
00:05:48
Speaker
but it's the same word here you're saying for whether or not you, whether you translate this man or humanity, it's the same as the word for Adam. Yep. I don't. Yep. Let us make humanity in our image. Tell them we'll talk about this word a little bit. And after our likeness, the moot. So tell them and do moot. Those are the two words. Tell them and do moot.
00:06:08
Speaker
Yeah, Selim. Selim, like with a T or with a F? Like a T before the F. Okay, Selim. Selim, exactly. Now, there's been discussion in Christian theology, like, are these two different things? Does the Telim mean one thing and the Demut mean something else?
00:06:22
Speaker
And I don't think so. Honestly, I think the Demut is just complimenting the Tselem here. They're used interchangeably even later on, chapter 5, but in verse 27, what follows, it just reverts back to the in his Tselem. It doesn't say in his likeness again. Image and likeness are communicating one idea here.
00:06:42
Speaker
I think so. Yep. Yep. In Hebrew, Tselem and Demut have a similar range of meanings. And I think that here that Demut is just complementing that Tselem or we're explaining it or something like that. Okay. We should know it's to the prepositions that are being used here in our Tselem. That'd be Hebrew bet.
00:07:00
Speaker
which has a range of meanings one of the primary meanings would be like in and then the phrase that comes after after our likeness that's the Hebrew preposition cough and that also has a range of meanings that means something like according to or as so they have overlapping meanings here that says some people have tried to make a big deal out of being made in
00:07:22
Speaker
God's image in God's solemn and then after or according to his likeness. Again, I don't think the author is trying to make a big point here because those are flipped in Chapter five and you have as you have the as his image in his likeness.
00:07:39
Speaker
I guess I'm not even sure what that would mean for there to be a big difference between in our image and as our likeness. Yeah, let me explain that a little bit. In our image can actually be a little bit confusing. It kind of connotes perhaps that God is the image.
00:07:55
Speaker
that God has an image, that God has a physicality. That is not what it's communicating. It is not communicating, let us make humanity like my physical resemblance, because the Hebrew affirmation is that Yahweh does not have a physical body. Does that make sense? Yeah. So it's just a little bit confusing. And so as our image, that actually, in English, that makes a little bit more sense. That's actually a little bit more helpful. It's like, okay, no, the humans are the image,
00:08:21
Speaker
of God, whatever that means. It's not like God has a physical form, is the image, and humans are like that. That's not it. They're like a representation of Him.
00:08:30
Speaker
Exactly. And so I actually think that the English phrase in his image can be a little bit confusing. Scholars call this the bet of identity, meaning let us create humans in the identity of image of God. In other words, as the image of God. So when I talk about image of God in English, I tend to actually just say humans are the image of God, or humans were created as the image of God. In English, that's actually communicating a little bit more clearly what's being said here.
00:08:59
Speaker
Hopefully that's not too far in the weeds. Yeah, I think I'm tracking there.
Dominion and Human Purpose
00:09:02
Speaker
Let us make humanity in our image and after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the seas and over the birds of the skies, etc. Yeah, so I guess just to clarify then in 26, then you're reading this, like then God said, let us make humanity as our image and as our likeness. Yeah, that's more or less how I'm reading it.
00:09:22
Speaker
And then what follows in verse 26 and let them have dominion. Hebrew scholars note that this phrase that follows is the result of the previous, let us make humanity in this way. And so you could read the second phrase there and let them have as so that they will have. So it's like, create them in the image so that they will then do this.
00:09:43
Speaker
Oh, interesting. So there's a strong connection between what it means to be created as the image of God and now this command to have dominion over the fish of the sea that follows.
00:09:53
Speaker
Absolutely. It's like the ability, if not the obligation, to have dominion over the fish of the sea and all the creatures of the land and the land itself comes from being put into the position or into the vocation of image of God. Verse 27 communicates kind of the same thing. So God created humanity in his own image. And again, it's Adam. And in fact, here it's Ha Adam. Ha is the Hebrew definite article, like our the. You never say,
00:10:21
Speaker
the proper name. So this does not mean God created Adam, like the person Adam in his image. In fact, it can't mean that because you have ha Adam, which means that it's referring to all of humanity. He would not say the mat or the nick. So also you do not say the proper name in Hebrew. So are there English translations that have done that?
00:10:44
Speaker
I don't think so. I think they usually say, so God created man in his own image. Okay. So I guess what you're getting at there then is when we're reading Genesis 2, where it does talk about God creating Adam, we can't necessarily say, oh, that's repeating what's going on here in Genesis 1, or is this maybe make some distinction between the two?
00:11:02
Speaker
All good questions. The start of chapter two I think is talking about humanity still. Even where God splits Hadam. When God splits the man or splits the person, I don't even know if he's, uh, if he's sexed yet because the Hebrew phrase is to take a whole flank, meaning like a half of the guy and split him into two. And now you have a woman and a man. Oh, so Hadam gets divided up into the man and the woman.
00:11:30
Speaker
Yeah, so in chapter 2, when God said, it is not good for Hadam to be alone. It's not really clear if it's actually talking about Adam yet. It's still Hadam. Humanity. This is not good for humanity to be alone.
Gender Roles and Co-Rulership
00:11:43
Speaker
And in that case, he creates the animals. And then he splits Hadam in two and creates a man and woman.
00:11:49
Speaker
those verses are kind of funny to me because usually, or oftentimes, at least in the older translations, they'll say God took a rib out of the man, which I guess is possible. I mean, the word is more like the whole flank, like the whole side of the big boat, the arc, like the whole side of it running. If you're looking at it from the side, that's the same Hebrew word, the flank, like the whole side of it. You split it in half. Like a whole rack of ribs with all the meat attached.
00:12:15
Speaker
Right. And that's kind of the imagery that's going on when God creates the Isha, the woman in chapter two. We're getting too far afield there. Sure. Well, sometimes I think of it or have thought of it like God created Adam in his image and then also Eve was created out of Adam.
00:12:31
Speaker
That has been an interpretation of the past. Yeah, that's totally wrong. Okay, it's pretty clear here. I guess now reading back through 26 and 27 carefully, it's let them have dominion in verse 26 and then in verse 27, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. So this idea of the image of God being created as the image of God very much applies to male and female.
00:12:52
Speaker
Right, right. And I should note too, I'm sorry, I think you're looking at my notes here. Second phrase of verse 27, in the image of God he created them. In Hebrew that's actually the masculine pronoun. He created him. The only reason why it's masculine is it's referring back to ha'adam, which is a masculine word. We don't have that in English. And so I'm translating ha'adam as humanity, which is right.
00:13:13
Speaker
And so in English, you wouldn't say him. For humanity, you'd say them. So sorry about that. You were looking up my notes. But in the last phrase of verse 27, it says, male and female, he created them, just in case you were wondering. So there we go.
00:13:45
Speaker
And God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the land and subdue it. So I'm translating arits as land, which is what it is, instead of earth or world.
00:13:58
Speaker
Partially because, if you just translate it as land, that is just a better translation, to be honest, of what the Hebrew author is thinking. They are not thinking globe, which earth can imply. They are not thinking globe, which world can imply. I mean, they likely didn't believe in a globe, didn't believe in a round earth, in a sphere, right? Yeah. This is still very much in, following after the creation survey, you've got this division of the skies above and the land below. Exactly. And the sea underneath the land.
00:14:26
Speaker
Right. And so, yeah, I think it's better to translate R. It says land usually, and then skies as well. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the skies. I like skies better than heaven or heavens because in English when we say heaven, sometimes we think of the space where God dwells that's beyond our four dimensional space time experience. That is not what the Hebrew Bible is thinking. They're thinking up there, what's above me? And we have an English word for that and it's sky. So I think that's a better translation.
00:14:55
Speaker
The birds are not consistently trailing in and out of our dimension is what you're claiming here.
00:14:59
Speaker
I mean, I don't think so. You might have different beliefs about that. So let humanity fill the land and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the skies and over every living thing that moves on the land. And God said, behold, I've given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the land. And then God gives every plant to the animals as well. And it was so verse 31 and God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good.
00:15:27
Speaker
So we see in verse 26 there, this God says, let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the skies and over the livestock and over all the land and over every creeping thing that creeps on the land. Then verse 28, you see this very similar command and then it feels like it goes on and now it gets expanded out into the plants and animals and what things are going to eat.
00:15:48
Speaker
Yeah. So are we supposed to see this as all being part of this dominion of man or is this the dominion of man and then kind of separate instructions for how plants and animals are supposed to function?
00:16:00
Speaker
Oh, no, I mean, it's all connected. Okay. Humanity is installed in this position of image and everything else follows. Therefore, they have the authority and the responsibility to care for the creatures that God had just made on day five, to care for the land that God had just made. And he gives them instructions about what's the appropriate things to eat in that context. Sure. Now let's circle back to that male and female. He created them again.
00:16:30
Speaker
I mean, that's so important. So you voiced that misunderstanding that some people have had in the past in church history, that God created Adam, God created a man in his image, and then God creates a woman out of the man, which sometimes has been thought to leave the woman out of being made in the image of God. It's so clear here, especially in verse 27, in case you're wondering about everything else, like it says, male and female, he created them. He created them what?
00:17:00
Speaker
as his image. And we'll talk about what the image of God means now, but it is a call for them to share in this position whatever the position is. It's a call for them to share in it. You know, what comes later where you have the suppression of one sex under the other, the desire to rule over each other? In chapter three, it talks about that explicitly, and it says that's all a result of
Image of God in Ancient Contexts
00:17:24
Speaker
the fall. It's all a result of the waywardness of this humanity.
00:17:29
Speaker
I mean, you cannot see in these texts at the beginning the fundamental text that define human identity. You cannot see the rule of one sex over the other. It's a result of the fall according to Genesis 3. Sure. Well, in that command there, be fruitful and multiply and fill the land. It's going to be pretty tough to do with just one gender or the other. It's going to have to be cooperative. Yeah, you can't do that with just males or with just females. Turns out. Yeah. So that's the text.
00:17:58
Speaker
It's all perfectly clear to me. Perfect.
00:18:13
Speaker
In ancient Egypt, from the 1600s before common era onward, the phrase image of God was used of kings and primarily communicated two things. Rulership and sonship. Rulership because the king ruled on behalf of the god or the gods in their context and sonship because the king was thought to reflect the character of the gods or was to emulate them.
00:18:37
Speaker
Sonship is not implying necessarily physical resemblance, especially when the gods sometimes were not thought to have physical bodies. It's kind of unclear what all the ancient people thought about that. They had myths where they very much had physical bodies, but it's not really clear if they actually believed that or if they are anthropomorphizing their god stories or whatever. But rulership and sonship. So we actually have a bunch of original material from that time, from ancient Egypt, and also in Assyrian literature,
00:19:05
Speaker
that defines what they mean by image of God because they use the same phrase. It's not a particularly Bible-y phrase. Oh, sure. So this is not a phrase that ancient Israelites would have heard and gone, oh, wait, I've never heard that before. Please explain this to me. No, not weird. This is a phrase they likely were familiar with. They knew what kind of connotations is carried.
00:19:24
Speaker
Yep, it's not new at all. Yeah, in an inscription from the Karnak Temple near modern-day Luxor in Egypt from 1460, before a common era, the god Amun-Ra says to King Thutmose III, I came to let you tread on Jahi's chiefs. I spread them under your feet throughout their lands. I let them see your majesty as Lord of Light so that you shone before them in my likeness. It's the god talking to the king and saying that you are in my likeness. Which will give you power here.
00:19:52
Speaker
Yeah, from Steelove, Amenatop the Third.
00:20:08
Speaker
from an inscription called The Hymn to Aten and the King. You love him, talking about the king. You love him, you make him like a ten. You dawn to give him eternity. When you set, you give him infinity. You create him daily like your forms. You build him in your image like a ten. A ten there is a name not saying that it's created like a ten out of ten.
00:20:32
Speaker
Oh, I'm sorry. Ah, 10. He was a 10 out of 10. It's a sun god, sorry. You make him like a dime. That's pretty good, actually.
00:20:41
Speaker
So there's definitely a lot in those that I'm not following really closely, but it looks like... Oh, I'm only going for the phrase, image of God, likeness of God, form of the God. I think what I'm seeing in these, correct me here if I'm wrong, but it's this idea that the God is enthusiastic about the creation of these people in his image or the fact that they're being renewed in his likeness and sees them as functioning with the power of the gods.
00:21:06
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know about that first part, that the god is always enthusiastic about it. Sometimes in the ancient ancient literature outside the Bible, the creation of humanity is more like the gods don't want to do the hard work of the land. So they're like, let's create these creatures to do the hard work. So sometimes it's more like very practical and not like a loving, enthusiastic creation. I love these creatures. It's more like, I hate this. I work too hard. I'm going to make the humans, I'm going to create humans and have them do it.
00:21:35
Speaker
The second part of what you said, would you say authority rule or something? Yeah, like power.
Universal Vocation of Rulership
00:21:40
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that is 100% the case. Yeah, we'll talk about that even more here. But yeah, it's 100% the case that the king, and again, in most of these examples, it's actually the king that's called the image of God. But they are to rule on behalf of the God. Absolutely. The God delegated them to have authority over their domain, over the land. Okay.
00:22:02
Speaker
Yeah, just a couple more passages here from the Victory Stila of King Pye. Hear what I did, exceeding the ancestors, I the king, image of God, living likeness of Atum. So again, you have the same phrase there where he calls himself the image of the God of Atum. So you should hear what I did. Exactly. It's a position of authority.
00:22:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's a position of almost royal authority, right? This is a little later from 670 Before Common era. That's pretty explicit. The king is the very image of Bell, who I'm assuming is this god here.
00:22:54
Speaker
Yep, exactly. So again, remember the bet of identity in the image of God that we talked about? I very much think, especially as you read this literature, they are meaning that the person is made as the image, or the person, the king, is the image.
00:23:12
Speaker
So yeah, common themes here. The kings are the image of God, or were made as the image of God. So is the Genesis passage then unique in that it's calling humanity the image of God rather than just a king figure? Yeah, I think some of these speak a little bit more broadly about humans being created in the image of God, but typically
00:23:35
Speaker
Yeah, typically it's a function, it's a role, it's a position reserved for the king, for the pharaoh. Which, if it comes with the idea of, you know, ruling or authority, I mean, that makes perfect sense. Absolutely. Exactly. You're pointing out some of the unique theology that the Hebrew Bible has, that that authority has been delegated to all of humanity. That is what God intended. Oh, interesting.
00:23:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's powerful. We talked about that authority being intended for men and women. Male and female, he created them. Not only that, but all their children. The whole human community is to function in the role of image of God, according to the Hebrew Bible. And that authority is specifically, at least in 26, 27, 28, over the earth, the animals, the plants.
00:24:21
Speaker
Yeah, over the physical domains that God created. Yeah, and there's a reason for that. So let's keep talking about that. So we see some common themes here in the ancient areas. I think this is really interesting. Egyptian pharaohs would sometimes even carve out an image of themselves in a foreign land in order to demonstrate the extent of their rule. Like if they went into a foreign land and conquered it, they would install like this image of themselves.
00:24:45
Speaker
And what does that demonstrate? We have a bust of Ramses II that he made in Beirut on the Mediterranean, which is not in Egypt. Why are we finding busts of Ramses II there? It's because he went and conquered someone up there and he installed his idol statute of himself demonstrating that that's the extent of his rule.
00:25:07
Speaker
This represents me in this region. Interesting. So it's like you won't be able to see me, but this image now, this image of me is supposed to stand there and remind all of you that I am still in authority here. And this image is supposed to help encourage you to remember that I'm still in charge and to live in accordance with that.
00:25:25
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's interesting too. So in the ancient European literature, the image of God almost uniformly meant something like the child of the God, the ruler of the land, something like that. So though the image of God is the most authoritative human in the land, it's not the supreme authority because the supreme authority would have been the gods, right? Would have been the God or the gods.
00:25:46
Speaker
In other words, the image of God is installed as the human agent, the one that has the greatest human authority, the human agent by which the will of the gods is accomplished in the land. The image of God is the child of God that the God has installed to govern for his own interests.
00:26:02
Speaker
So this is a good summary from a book I recommend from Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum, God's Kingdom Through God's Covenants. They talk about this and they have a good summary of this. They say, quote, the king is the image of God because he has a relationship to the deity as the son of God and a relationship to the world as ruler for the God.
00:26:23
Speaker
In the ancient Near East, these would have been understood as covenant relationships. We ought to assume that the meaning in the Bible is identical or at least similar unless the biblical text clearly distinguishes its meaning from the surrounding culture. And it does not.
00:26:39
Speaker
So yeah, I don't think the Bible actually at all tries to distinguish its use of the phrase image of God from the type of meanings that phrase has in the surrounding cultures. Not at all. I don't see any evidence of that. Interesting. So it might apply it more broadly to humanity than Assyrians do.
00:26:58
Speaker
Yeah, there are some differences, but the idea of being made in God's image is a well-known motif. And the Hebrew Bible does not try to say, oh, this phrase actually means something way different. It connotes these other things instead of a rulership or something like that. Does that make sense? Yeah.
00:27:15
Speaker
It doesn't try to do that. Not at all. It actually doubles down on it with some differences, which I think are key. So these stories from the ancient Near East demonstrate to us that the concept of image of God, like I said, it's a well-known one for the biblical writers. It's one that's not unique to the Hebrew Bible. Like I said, the Hebrew Bible's theology of the image of God is unique. There's some unique features to it for sure. But the concept, like I said earlier, is not a Bible-y concept.
Ethical Implications of Co-Ruling
00:27:44
Speaker
Let's consider, though, some of those important differences like you brought up between the Hebrew Bible's conception of image of God and that of the other ancient Irish in literature. In the Hebrew Bible, all people, like I said, all people are God's image, whereas in Egyptian thinking, at least, it's usually just the king that is, you know, the image of God.
00:28:02
Speaker
But if the image of God is synonymous with rulership, that means that in the Hebrew Bible, all people have the vocation of rulership over the creation that God had made. All people, men and women, are to manage or steward the creation that God made on his behalf and toward his purposes.
00:28:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's kind of interesting because if you call a group of people corporately to rule or reign together, that's going to look very, very differently than calling one person like a king to rule and reign over the rest of the people. So all that distinction between, oh, it's a call to a king versus call corporately may seem subtle at first. I think if you actually start thinking about how that's going to work itself out in human society, it's going to be pretty radically different.
00:28:48
Speaker
I think it's huge because it implies that humans don't have dominion over each other. They have dominion over the land and over the creatures of the land, the land itself, the plant life. They don't have dominion over each other. They are to co-rule over it, which has a lot of ethical implications for how you're supposed to interact with other human beings, I would say.
Prohibition of Idols and Human Reflection
00:29:10
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:29:16
Speaker
So here's a fun thought. I think this is super interesting. Let's talk about idol statues a little bit. So you may be surprised to learn. I think you know this, Matt, but in Hebrew, the word for image, selem, is the same word used to translate idol very oftentimes, or idol statue. Oh, sure. So you'd almost think of that Genesis 1 passage like humans were created as the idol of God. That would not be a completely inappropriate thing to say, although idols can note other things that aren't true of humanity. Sure.
00:29:44
Speaker
But yeah, it's the same word. Here's an interesting question, I think. Why does God prohibit idol statues in the Torah? Well, he'd already created humanity to be his image idol.
00:29:55
Speaker
right right yeah yeah no one thought that idol statues actually were the god so it doesn't actually seem that sinister that bad to create a idol an image for Yahweh as long as you don't think it's Yahweh like it doesn't seem that bad it seems kind of normal like yeah i know this isn't Yahweh the god of israel but it's representing him so like as long as that's the understanding why did god have such a problem with it
00:30:22
Speaker
Because humans are the idol statue of God. Humans are the image of God. That's interesting, because when we think of idolatry in the Old Testament, we usually think of, oh, people are now giving worship to something other than Yahweh. And that's certainly part of what's going on frequently. But you've got this other element now where it's not just that people are worshiping something else, but it's that humans were created to be this image idol. They were supposed to be the ones that the rest of the creation would look at and go, oh, wow, OK, I see the work of God in the world, like worship Yahweh.
00:30:52
Speaker
When humans now go, oh no, we're going to go create this other idol, even if it's supposed to be an idol for Yahweh, they're like stepping out of the role that they were intended to play.
00:31:01
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It would be a little bit like if you hired somebody to perform a task for you and they then like built a cardboard cutout of themselves doing the task and you came back and you're like, hey, why isn't this stuff getting done? And they said, oh, well, look, I've made this image to do the task. Like your frustration wouldn't necessarily be that they built this cardboard cutout. It'd be no, you're not doing the task anymore. Well, exactly. Yeah.
00:31:28
Speaker
That's what idolatry is. It's investing something with the glory. Think Romans one and the role that you were supposed to do. Like you were supposed to perform this role. You were supposed to sit in this position and to get this job done. And now you are acting like that's something else's job. Like that's just lazy. That's why it's so problematic.
00:31:50
Speaker
That's why God's like, no, no, no, no, no, you are the image. You reflect me. You rule on my behalf. Don't shirk your responsibility. Don't give that to something else. That's lazy. That's backwards. Take responsibility and be my image. That's what I've called you to do.
00:32:09
Speaker
Anyway, I think that's such a fun little insight that is, I guess, sometimes missed if you don't understand what image of God typically means.
Human Authority and Stewardship
00:32:18
Speaker
And if you don't understand, that's the same word for idols. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely just adds another element to kind of how ridiculous it is for humans to create images or idols and to bow down to them. Right.
00:32:29
Speaker
It's like, no, you totally missed the point. You're supposed to be the one that the rest of the creation looks at and sees, oh, there's the power of Yahweh working. And you're now kneeling down to a small piece of that creation. It makes the whole thing seem even more absurd than I had thought of it previously.
00:32:45
Speaker
Yeah, man. And I feel like this would get really practical really quick if you kind of think about modern forms of idolatry. Anytime we don't look inward to fix the problems of the world or we want to blame something else. I mean, in a couple years, we're all going to be blaming AI for all the problems of the world.
00:33:03
Speaker
It's like, well, you made it. You take responsibility. We made it. Come on. We have to look inward, take responsibility for the problems of the world, because we are the managers of the world. Don't blame other things, if that makes sense. Anyway, we could get real practical probably then.
00:33:20
Speaker
All right, so the image of God, people are sub-rulers, humanity is, they are sub-rulers with purpose. They are under the authority of God, of Yahweh, but they are rulers over Yahweh's creation, over his, at least the land, the land to see the creatures and the plants, right?
00:33:39
Speaker
They have authority over those things, and God gave them that authority. When we download the ancient Near Eastern understanding of the image of God into the Hebrew Bible's description of humanity, male and female, being created as the image of God, we see clearly that this is a call to vocation. The image of God is a call to vocation. It's a position they are installed in. It's a role they're installed in.
00:34:01
Speaker
It's a call to steward Yahweh's good land on his behalf toward his ends. And what are Yahweh's ends? What does he want? To extend the order, the peace, and the life of Eden, the garden that is in bliss, right? The garden that is in Eden, across the entire land that is otherwise in hirutohu wa bohu. Without purpose, without function. Chaotic.
00:34:26
Speaker
So it's like God's created order is complete, but only to a limited extent. Well, absolutely. In Genesis 1-2, there's not at all an implication that the whole land or all that is the land. Again, the Hebrews did not think globe, so it's really hard for us to get out of that mindset where we cannot read Genesis 1 in thinking that it's describing the formation of a globe. That is not what they thought. They speak anthropocentrically.
00:34:54
Speaker
what things look like to them. And it's super clear that what is being formed is this garden that is in a very specific location. It is in the land of bliss in Eden, which is on the broader land. It doesn't talk about the broader land being
00:35:11
Speaker
beautiful with fruit trees and abundance and everything else. No, in fact, when humans fall away from God's purposes, when they rebel, God casts them out there. Well, there's actually probably already thorns in the souls and things like that. The reason why it's such a hard existence after they're cast out is because they're out there outside of that ordered, good, productive space. That's interesting with that idea of
00:35:34
Speaker
humans being created as subrulers. It's like they're created to continue or to keep growing that garden, that like perfect created space that God set up. Almost as if God is like, all right, I've started creation, like here's this beautiful garden that I've made for you. Now I want you guys to keep working this garden and to go now fill out the rest of the earth, like go Edenize the planet.
00:35:56
Speaker
Yeah, it says that. Fill the land and subdue it. Fill all the land, not just the garden, not just Eden, all the land. Eden is on the land and the garden is in Eden. It's a very specific location.
00:36:09
Speaker
The implication is you have to go out there and bring this garden to the rest of it. That's interesting. It's almost like a template. Like, all right, guys, this you see this bit right here. I want the rest of that to look like this. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think that's what it means to fill the land and subdue it, which is the command that they are to do.
00:36:26
Speaker
Yeah, very interesting. And you might ask why? Like, why does God want a good and ordered space? I mean, it's just his nature, I think. I would assume that God is just good and ordered and everything he makes is good and ordered and productive and has meaning and has purpose and all that. But God wants to dwell.
00:36:45
Speaker
with humanity in this physical space that he made.
Temple Imagery and Human Role
00:36:49
Speaker
God loves his creation. He calls it good, good, good, good, good, good, seven times. And he wants to dwell with them. And you see that happening at the beginning of Genesis in the first couple of chapters, that God is walking and talking, so to speak, with the humanity in this space that he created. That is like the ideal condition. In other words, the creation is a temple space.
00:37:13
Speaker
A temple space is where heaven, God's space, and earth, human space, are overlapping. And that's what his creation is to be. It's kind of interesting. You mentioned some of those Egyptian writings that you were reading from. Almost that there's this idea that the gods created humanity or created the king potentially as their image because they wanted to be more separate from it or like they didn't want to have to go do all this. You know, they're like this distant manager who doesn't want to have to be in the office. He just wants to manage remotely.
00:37:41
Speaker
But with Yahweh, you get this very different idea that he's created all of humanity to be his image, to be his sub-rulers, and that he wants to go be among them as they're doing it. Yeah, that's a big distinction, isn't it? I hadn't even thought about that that much, but yeah, you're right. Let's give this back-breaking labor to someone else. I don't want to be around that. I want to just sleep with who I want to sleep with and party all day like it's 1699. BC.
00:38:31
Speaker
Yeah, that is so key. I think that's really beautiful. Yeah, humans are called to work and keep the land, to fill the earth and subdue it. Not because Yahweh is bored or tired, but rather because Yahweh, for reasons that are probably hard to comprehend, wanted to entrust shared rule over the land with humanity, which is the crown of his creation. He wanted to work in harmony and in loving, trusting relationship.
00:38:59
Speaker
with humans toward his broader purposes of filling the land and making it all a temple space where God and the created world could be together. That is not something we experience today, I feel like. Yeah, it feels very foreign. Yeah. Oh, man, this is all very ideal and out there doesn't seem very practical.
00:39:27
Speaker
Yeah, we really need to key in here before we end the episode on the phrase to work and keep the land from chapter two. So there's two creation accounts, Genesis one and Genesis two. They're not the same. In fact, it's actually kind of hard to patch them together if you're trying to rewrite a history book.
00:39:46
Speaker
For example, the order is all different than in chapter one. Like in chapter one, the crown of creation is humanity in day six. It's at the end of God's creative acts. Obviously day seven is when God rests, but in chapter two, you actually have plants and animals are not created.
00:40:03
Speaker
when humanity or a human at least is created and then the plants and the animals are created and God puts the human into the garden where those plants and animals were created and then God splits the human in half and then you have Isha and Isha, male and female, Adam and Eve.
00:40:23
Speaker
So these two accounts are definitely different but complementary in communicating deep theological truths. And I think we're wise to listen to what they are both communicating on their own terms and not do violence to them by trying to smash them together into one account or prioritize chapter one over chapter two in the ordering of days or chapter two over one. It's not wise to do any of that. Let's let these texts speak to us in their own terms.
00:40:50
Speaker
In any case, if in Chapter 1, the primary command given to humanity to fulfill their position as the image of God is to fill the earth and subdue it, then in Chapter 2, the primary command to fulfill their God-given position is to work and keep the garden space.
00:41:14
Speaker
We frequently ask ourselves questions like, you know, who are we? What are we doing? Like human identity questions. As we've seen, luckily for us, the Hebrew Bible begins by telling us exactly who we are and what we're supposed to be doing. So this phrase, work and keep the land means to tend to, to nourish, to maintain and to protect the space that humans were given to inhabit.
00:41:35
Speaker
the space that humans were given to inhabit of course is the garden on the land of eden that is on the broader land this garden was given as a temple as a temple space for god to dwell with humanity on this created plane heaven and earth are united right it's a physical space and a heavenly space because god is dwelling there that's what a temple is but
00:41:56
Speaker
If this idea of working and keeping this space, if the idea that that is a call to maintain a cosmic temple, if that idea is new to you, consider just like the tabernacle and the temple that comes later in the Hebrew Bible.
00:42:12
Speaker
All the decor and the symbolism of the tabernacle and later the temple refer back to the garden in Eden. You got like the fruit trees and all those things, they're symbols for this beautiful space, like a garden Eden space, where God and humanity dwell together. And that's what a tabernacle temple is, where God comes and dwells in that space together. It's a microcosm of what was supposed to be a lot bigger of a reality, right?
00:42:39
Speaker
In fact, those who worked for the tabernacle complex, the Levites, their main job was to work and keep the temple space. Same Hebrew words. That's interesting because like the terms in English work and keep to me feel pretty general. Like you could apply those to anything. Yeah. Obviously, if you apply those to that context of a garden, you say, oh, hey, go work and keep this garden that has very specific
00:43:02
Speaker
ways that's going to be carried out, right? You're going to be tilling, you're going to be digging, you're going to be weeding, doing all this stuff. But to work and keep a temple, even a temple that's designed to look like a garden space, it's going to seem like it's going to have very different ways that it's actually carried out in my mind. So am I correct in seeing working keep there as being more general commands for humanity, more generalized actions, and then it's, okay, now in this context of a garden, it's more specific. In the context of a tabernacular temple space, it's going to carry more specific tasks.
00:43:31
Speaker
I'm focused just on the general, the two things. The same words are used to describe what humanity is supposed to do in Genesis 1 for all of the land as what the Levites are called to do later on in the Tabernacle Temple complex. I'm just calling attention to the fact that it's the same phrase used to describe that. Secondly, yeah, the general meaning is to maintain the space, to maintain it in an ordered, not chaotic way, to maintain it in such a way that is proper for God to dwell in it.
00:43:59
Speaker
which is what humans were supposed to do with the land, maintain it in such a way that it is proper for Yahweh the creator to dwell on it. There's entropy if you don't work at things. Things fall into disarray, or people screw things up, or animals screw things up, or who knows what.
00:44:16
Speaker
And so there has to be productive labor in order to maintain things in an ordered and sustainable way. It's not at all like the humans are called to sit around and enjoy the presence of God. From the beginning, they are called to work and to maintain the space that God gave them to rule over.
00:44:33
Speaker
However, this work was supposed to be life giving and sustainable. And some of those things, I think, I think have probably been lost when we mismanaged. Sure. But yeah, the idea that it's very active. Yeah, God created humanity to actually be doing something to be to have dirt under their fingernails and to be active in the earth definitely brings a lot more to that phrase image of God than the way I've understood that sometimes.
00:44:59
Speaker
Oh, for sure. Yeah, the word for work in Hebrew, avad, is the same word for to serve.
Chaos from Rebellion and Hope for Restoration
00:45:08
Speaker
It's the same root word for servant in the Old Testament. In other words, it could easily be translated into English as to serve instead of to work.
00:45:17
Speaker
The Hebrew word for keep, shamar, is the same word used for the cherubim, actually. Guarding the garden after Adam and Eve are expelled in Genesis 3.23. So when we see the phrase to work and to keep, we could easily just translate that as to serve and to preserve.
00:45:36
Speaker
wherever humans set foot, we are to serve and preserve this space as if it's a space intended for the dwelling of God himself. Maybe that helps. Yeah. Yeah. And then just to recap again, that first command that we saw in chapter one to fill the land and subdue it.
00:45:56
Speaker
This mandate presupposes that all of the land on the what they thought to be probably like a flat earth, right? But that doesn't matter. Covered in a snow globe. Right, exactly. It is definitely what they thought. So the mandate presupposes that all of the land of the earth was not in fact ordered and prosperous and good like the garden that is in Eden, which is on land.
00:46:15
Speaker
That's kind of interesting. So when God does the six days of creation, He creates this garden, but it's not like He's totally filled the earth at this point. It's like His good creation is only extended so far. For sure. Yeah, I don't want to at all think Genesis 1 is trying to describe the creation of the globe, for one thing, because it never speaks in those terms. So that's inappropriate to even say that. It's not describing the creation of the whole universe. If it were, I mean,
00:46:42
Speaker
It would have had it wrong because it describes a hard dome over the earth where the stars were lodged in. That's how it describes it. I don't think we should always assume that Genesis 1 is the description of God's creation of all things physical. That's not at all what's going on. It's the creation of this space. Of this space where God and humanity are to dwell together and to rule together over his creatures, over the land, and bring order.
00:47:06
Speaker
out of chaos, and to extend that order beyond just the garden that's in Eden to all of Eden, and then beyond Eden into all of the land that he created.
00:47:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's almost like a template then. Here, I've created this beautiful Eden garden. Now humans, take a look at this. Now go make the rest of it look like this. Yeah, exactly. So as humans work and keep the limited space of the garden in the land of Eden, they're supposed to expand this little garden where God dwells with them to all the surrounding land. In other words, there's supposed to be an expansion of the good, wise, creative, sustainable garden to cover all the land.
00:47:44
Speaker
No, that's the idea. Obviously, this plan went way off track when humans rebelled and when we continue to rebel. Didn't seem to take very long either. Oh, yeah.
00:47:56
Speaker
Yeah, it went way off track in our descent into rebellion, and like I said, it continues to go off track every time. Me and you today continue to live in rebel ways, continue to not align ourselves with the wisdom and the good order of God. Things get more chaotic. We are supposed to be the bringers of order and peace as the rulers of the land, and yet we contribute to the chaos very often. We even bring chaos into the good and ordered spaces. We're very good at doing that. We're efficient chaos machines.
00:48:26
Speaker
Yeah, which is kind of sad. It's really sad. So after humanity rebelled, I mean, humans do. I mean, we expand across all the land and we do build civilizations and all that stuff. But notice that we were expelled from the garden first for our failure to obey our maker.
00:48:45
Speaker
This means that though we expanded and were creative and built cities and societies and languages, we did so with a sort of distance from Yahweh, our creator. That is not the created intent. Things were not supposed to be that way. I mean, you mentioned that with the tabernacle, like God wouldn't have to come set up a tabernacle so that he could dwell, you know.
00:49:04
Speaker
with the high priest once a year and, you know, to some extent with Israel if it wasn't for the fact that we had been exiled from his presence. Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of our ingenuity was and is used on disordered and unsustainable endeavors, things that advance personal profits or pleasure at the cost sometimes of others, of other rulers of the land, of other image bearers of God.
00:49:28
Speaker
and at the cost of God's land and God's other creatures that we're supposed to be managing well. Instead of bringing the good and sustainable garden to spread across all the lands, we have very often spread disorder and chaos to the degree that the land is no longer a fit place for the good and ordered creator to dwell.
00:49:48
Speaker
That is a description of the Israelite story and the surrounding nations. It's just chaos. The Old Testament is just chaos, man. What if you imagine humanity now as having been designed to grow and develop this garden, taking it out into the wild and wastelands of the earth?
00:50:06
Speaker
And then humanity gets kicked out of the Garden of Eden and now they're struggling to try to do this task that they were made to do in a world that's not conducive to doing it. And now they're seeking to usurp their correct position and take authority over one another and you get all this infighting. It's not hard to imagine how once you're outside of the garden, people are going to start to not function well because they're not in the space to do it well anymore.
00:50:30
Speaker
and things just get worse and worse. I mean, disorder breeds more disorder and the cycle just continues. So given this condition, you know, I've sometimes heard or read of Christians talking about our identity as the image of God as having been lost.
00:50:45
Speaker
This is actually popular in Christian theology and sometimes in places in church history. Or that our mission to work and keep our space and to fill the world and subdue it has been lost. And that's no longer our position. That is no longer what we're called to do.
00:51:01
Speaker
For the life of me, I cannot see a single reason to read the Bible in that way. To say, because you've screwed it up, you should give up and no longer be the image of God. The Bible does not say you have lost the authority, we have lost the ability, we have lost the call to rule the land well. Yeah, it's hard for me to read Genesis 1 and see the six days of creation at the end of the sixth day. You know, it is very good.
00:51:29
Speaker
to then imagine that, okay, well, humans sin, so now God's ready to just, like, discard major portions of that plan, of that good creation that he set up. If he was, he could have. He could have sent the flood story, right? He could have destroyed all of humanity. He could have done that again, or in a different way. But Yahweh never does.
00:51:49
Speaker
He's preserving image bearers.
Future Episodes: Practical Implications
00:51:50
Speaker
Yeah, the story of the Bible is God's plan to restore what has gone wrong. We've said this before, but read Genesis 1 and 2, and then read Revelation 21 and 22, the beginning of the Bible and the end of the Bible, and you'll very quickly see that there is supposed to be, and we hope for, a complete restoration of that which God originally intended.
00:52:12
Speaker
The end of the story is the same, is similar to the beginning of the story. The end isn't some ethereal, otherworldly, non-physical heaven up there somewhere. That's Gnosticism, that's not Christianity, it's not Judaism. It's a renovated, renewed Earth.
00:52:30
Speaker
God is not throwing away his world that he called good seven times in Genesis 1. He's restoring it, and he's starting with his image bearers. So all that said, we've been talking kind of theoretical so far because, yeah, I mean, the fundamental identity of human beings is presented in Genesis 1 and 2 in this picturesque, theoretical, ideal language for sure. And that's not at all what we experience anymore. And Genesis 3 gives a reason why that's not what we experience anymore.
00:53:00
Speaker
That's easy for me to see. God's calling for humanity is unchanged. But our means to carry out that vocation are pretty crippled right now. Yeah, it's not easy. But we want to ask in the next couple of episodes here what this identity of image-bearing means to you and me.
00:53:15
Speaker
Right now, as we live in a very non-ideal, fallen 21st century world, what does our being God's image on Earth call us to today? When it comes to culture making, when it comes to community building, Earth care, creature care, etc.
00:53:31
Speaker
So that's what our next few conversations will be about to get a little more practical. If our calling as God's image has not been lost and we are still in this position of rulership on his behalf for his purposes, what could that possibly mean as we live kind of in exile away from this beautiful space that all the land was supposed to be but is definitely not right now? Yeah, sounds important. Let's get into it.