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This concept of human creation “as the image of God in Gen 1:26–27 has been further illuminated through consideration of ancient Near Eastern conceptuality surrounding cultic images of God on the one hand and kings as images of deities on the other. Especially if one judges that Gen 1 was written in the Babylonian diaspora, we have good reason to believe the author and his community were familiar with Mesopotamian practices surrounding cult images of deities. These practices included the manufacture of images of gods that were (usually) in human form, the cultic activation of these images through rituals that denied the human origins of the images and attributed their making to divine intervention, and overall worship and care for such images as primary ways in which the gods made themselves physically accessible in the earthly world.⁸⁸ Already the Deuteronomistic History and Ezekiel include some critique of these practices and ideas surrounding cult images. Nevertheless, the late exilic prophetic material of Second Isaiah represents the most detailed engagement with Mesopotamian conceptuality surrounding divine images. For example, Isa 44:9–20 directly challenges the idea that gods, rather than humans, were the real manufacturers of cult images.⁸⁹

Likely crafted within a similar Mesopotamian diasporic context, Gen 1:26–27 represents a creative critique and alternative to Mesopotamian (and other) theology around cult images. Rather than endorsing (or critiquing, so Isa 44:9–20) human-made clay (often) anthropomorphic statues as images of God, it depicts actual humans—long recognized as divinely made in older cosmogonic traditions—as the truly God-made divine images.⁹⁰ In this sense, Gen 1 plays on the widespread phenomenon of depicting God in human form, present in Israel and many other cultures as well. Rather than understanding the correspondence between human form and human pictures of god as a result of people’s projection of their own form on god(s), this text proposes that the one God who created the universe projected his form on humans. In sum, Gen 1:26–27 suggests that God had (what we call) ‘human’ form first.

At the same time, Gen 1:26–27 qualifies the similarity of humans to their divine creator in ways foreign to Near Eastern cult image theology. Where Mesopotamian and other texts stressed the strong links of cult images with the gods they depicted, even to the point of speaking of cult images as if they were identical to the gods they represented, Gen 1:26 suggests, at least initially, that God made humans as images of God’s council in general (“let us make humans as our image”), and it adds an additional specification, “similar to our likeness,” that both claims (physical) similarity and also establishes some distance between humans and the divinity that they resemble.⁹¹ The term translated here as “likeness,” דמות, elsewhere is primarily attested in Ezekiel’s (exilic) prophecy as a term for quite approximate, and difficult-to-specify similarity, a sort of image that is otherwise indescribable (Ezek 8:2; see also 1:10, 13, 16, 22, 26, 28; 10:1, 10).⁹² Moreover, the preposition כ (here “similar to”) asserts both similarity and separation of its object from that with which it is being compared.⁹³ Anything that is merely similar to something else is also somehow different. Thus, within the charged diasporic context surrounding divine image practices, the crucial divine speech in Gen 1:26 states God’s intent to make humans as image-statues of divine beings in general, but also asserts, at least initially, that these statues will only be similar, in a difficult-to-quantify way (דמות) to the divinity they represent. Though Gen 1 singles humans out from other creatures as made by God as God’s image, they are also not identical replicas to God in the way that plants or other animals reproduce “according to their kind(s).”

Just as important, if not more so, for understanding the associations of the divine image language in Gen 1:26–27 is ancient Near Eastern ideology surrounding kings as images of gods, particularly insofar as the power exercised by kings mirrored and served as an extension of the power attributed to deities. For example, the Tukulti-Ninurta Epic speaks of how the Assyrian king “is the very image of Enlil” and similar statements about the king are found in a handful of later Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian letters. This theme is more common in Egyptian literature, starting in the Middle Kingdom period and expanding during the New Kingdom period in particular.⁹⁴ For example, an inscription for Amenophis/Amenhotep III from the 14th century BCE (New Kingdom) has the god, Amun-Re-Kamutef, declare to the king:

For you are my beloved son, who came out from my love, my image that I put on earth. I set you in peace to rule the land, in which you wipe out the heads of all the foreign lands.⁹⁵

For now it is important to recognize that these ideas of the king as an “image of [deity x]” occurred in cultures with cult images and were more or less linked with those cultures’ ideas of cult images as “images of [deity x].” In the case of the Tukulti-Ninurta Epic, the king is described as the “cult image” (ṣalmu) of the high God, Enlil, using language of birth and manufacture typical of Mesopotamian cult image theology.⁹⁶ Overall, the king as an animate and powerful “image of god” along with cult statues in Mesopotamia and other parts of the ancient Near East stood as the two chief ways in which otherwise unseen deities were understood to make themselves physically available in the earthly world.⁹⁷

Genesis 1 connects initially and repeatedly with these royal ideological strands of ancient Near Eastern image theology. This starts in God’s Gen 1:26 speech, when God says, “let us create humans as our image … so that they may rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the domesticated animals and all the earth, and all the creeping animals that creep on the earth.” Thus, it is as godlike rulers that humans stand vis-à-vis the animal world, not as cult statues representing God to them.⁹⁸ At the same time, Gen 1 diverges in significant ways from traditions about the king as image of God. To start, Gen 1:26–27 now depicts all of humanity—not just the king—as bearing this divine image conferring rulership, implicitly royalizing all of humanity.⁹⁹ Moreover, the scope of rule has shifted. Rather than a king ruling other humans, here humans rule all other creatures of God’s creation, even the fish of the sea and the birds of the air. There is no other obvious set of candidates to be ruled by all of humanity than these non-human creatures in the rest of creation.¹⁰⁰

As established by Stipp, the word used here for rule, רדה, diverges from the more general root משל used for the rule of heavenly bodies (1:16, 18; see also 3:16) in stressing the rule of a figure over peoples or other creatures perceived as strangers and potential enemies.¹⁰¹ Thus, we see the appearance in Gen 1:26 of a theme of potential animosity between humans and other creatures. Such a potential of animosity was already implied earlier in the chapter in the absence of a multiplication blessing for land creatures with whom humans share their habitat. Nevertheless, this animosity remains only an unrealized potential in the world of Gen 1, one only pronounced “very good” (1:31a) after God’s pronouncement of food regulations that presuppose peaceful co-existence of humans and animals (Gen 1:29–30). We will not see the actualization of the potential for violence between humans and animals until the flood narrative (esp. Gen 6:12; 9:2–6). So also, God’s call for humans to “subdue” (כבש) the earth does not imply violence against other earthly creatures. Rather this term probably anticipates the serious reworking of the earthly ground required for human production of vegetation through farming, which is an implicit focus of God’s immediately following instructions about food (Gen 1:29).

Contemporary interpreters sensitized to the negative impact that humans have had on the environment have struggled with this picture of powerful human rule over creation. Indeed, some have wanted to see God’s call here as implying a clear call for human care for creation, along the lines of expectations in texts like Psalm 72 that the king preserve justice.¹⁰² Nevertheless, such readings probably overlook how the Gen 1 picture of human domination was meant to stand as a utopian counter-picture to a later world where humans were and are subject to occasional threats from the animal world. In this respect, Gen 1 parallels its likely precursor in Gen 2(–3) in depicting an initial, ideal time where humans exercised control over animals (Gen 1:26–30//Gen 2:18–19), a time then followed by the present reality of animal-human enmity (איבה; Gen 3:15) or violence (חמס; Gen 6:11–13). Both texts were written in an ancient context where animals (e.g., snakes in Gen 3:15) were seen more generally as hostile and potentially dangerous forces than they are in most parts of the developed world. We see this in biblical depictions of humans threatened or killed by bears and lions (Amos 5:19; 1 Kgs 13:23–30) and God’s promises to insure that Israelites in the land will not be threatened by wild animals (Exod 23:29; Lev 26:6; Ezek 34:25). Within ancient Israel, a world without the threat of animal violence was either an inaccessible golden age before the flood (Gen 1:29–30) or a distant utopia (Hos 2:20 [ET 2:18]; Isa 11:6–9). The picture of supremely powerful human rule over animals in 1:26–28 was in relation to these assumptions.¹⁰³

Seen in this context, the creation of humans as godlike rulers over creation (1:26–27) is integrally connected to the following blessing by God to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (1:28). Multiple biblical narratives presuppose the (common sense) idea that military power comes with large numbers of troops (e.g., Judg 7:2–8; 1 Sam 14:6), and we also see a focus on the destructive power of animal fertility in the description of the plague of locusts filling the houses of Egypt (Exod 10:4–6). Building on these presuppositions, Gen 1 depicts God as initially bestowing such a power of multiplication on humans on day six, even as God does not grant the same power in numbers to the land animals with whom humans share the earth.¹⁰⁴

The power implications of this multiplication blessing are confirmed by the fact that it is immediately followed by God’s call for these humans, with their power in numbers, to “subdue” the earth and “rule” all animals. Though some have interpreted this blessing through the lens of later Hebrew as a command, the imperatives here represent the divine will to enable such multiplication, expressing God’s empowering blessing of multiplication and rule that prepares for the sustainability and continuity of human rule.¹⁰⁵ Just a pair or handful of humans would exercise little power vis-a-vis the animal world. Only if humans multiply greatly and “fill” the earth, with millions of god replicas teeming over different parts of its surface (and animals not enjoying a similar reproductive success), could humans hope to achieve domination of it. So God empowers humans for such multiplication and filling of earth through the blessing in Gen 1:28.

The importance of this multiplication blessing helps explain the doubled report of God’s creation of humans in 1:27b. Whereas other creation acts in Gen 1 all just report the creation of a given thing once, Gen 1:27 does so three times, using virtual poetic couplets. The following provides an extra-literal rendering of the Hebrew to make clear the shifts in number and gender:¹⁰⁶

God created humankind (or “the human” האדם) as God’s image,

As the image of God, he created him.

Male and female, he created them.

The second line diverges in number from the first (“he created them” versus “he created him”) to allow for the creation of both sexes of humanity, with a stress put on these sexes by placement at the head of the clause in front extra position. This description of God’s creation of male and female humans in 1:27b then serves as a bridge between God’s creation of humans in 1:26–27a and God’s call on them to “be fruitful and multiply,” thus preparing for this multiplication blessing in 1:28.¹⁰⁷ Notably the plural form begun in Gen 1:27b forms the background for God’s address to humans in the plural in Gen 1:28, blessing “them” and now giving commands to male and female humanity in plural imperatives.

Finally, it should be noted that we see a particular intensity of potential echoes of Gen 2–3 in this climactic final portion of P’s creation report. This starts with a parallel in formulation between Gen 1:26 and Gen 3:22. God’s consultation with the divine council about making humans as God images in Gen 1:26 and Yhwh’s consultation with the divine council about the problem posed by human godlikeness in Gen 3:22. Whereas Gen 2–3 concludes with Yhwh’s consultation with an unspecified plural group (the divine council) about the threat posed by human godlikeness (Gen 3:22), Gen 1 concludes with God consulting with a similar unspecified plural group about a plan to make humans as god images (Gen 1:26).¹⁰⁸ In addition, a dependence of Gen 1 on Gen 2–3 at this point could explain why the Priestly description of God’s creation of humanity in 1:27 initially describes God as creating “the humanity” (האדם; cf. אדם in 1:26), a possible blind motif left in Gen 1 of the focus across Gen 2–3 on “the human” (האדם; 2:7, 8, passim).¹⁰⁹ Finally, the description of human creation in Gen 1 and Gen 2–3 are both distinguished from a number of other such accounts in the Near East by their emphasis on the creation of male and female humans (Gen 1:27; 2:21–23) along with a related focus on intense human multiplication (Gen 1:28; 3:16). Seeing these various links of Gen 1 to its likely Gen 2–3 precursor can help the reader of Gen 1 appreciate how its author reconfigured themes in its precursor text in the process of also pointedly opposing certain aspects of it (e.g., the depiction of the divine response to human godlikeness in Gen 3:22).

1:29–30a. Provision of Different Vegetable Foods for Humans and Other Land AnimalsOne other element that Gen 1 shares with Gen 2–3 that is lacking in most other accounts of human creation is a set of divine instructions about permitted foods, indeed one highlighting tree fruit as one major type of human food (Gen 1:29–30a; cf. Gen 2:16–17). In this case, God’s speech to humans about food allowed for humans and animals continues the plural address to humans as a group (לכם in both 29a and 29b) initiated in 1:28 and prepared for by the description of two-sexed humanity in 1:27b. Nevertheless, the speech to humans in Gen 1:29–30 is distinguished from the prior one in 1:28 by the fact that the prior one is introduced as a “blessing” (ויברך אתם) while this one is just speech (ויאמר).

The initial and primary content of the overall speech in Gen 1:29–30 is God’s declaration that humans are allowed to eat both of the sorts of plants that God had created on day three, both seed-bearing vegetation (עשב זרע זרע; cf. עשב מזריע זרע ]למינהו[ in 1:11–12) and trees that have fruit with seeds in them (העץ אשר בו פרי עץ זרע זרע; cf. עץ פרי עשה פרי 1:11 and עץ עשה פרי אשר זרעו בו למניהו 1:12). Using language with echoes of a legal proclamation that effects a state of affairs, God starts with the untranslatable deictic interjection הנה (something like the French voila; here “see!”) and then uses the suffix form of the verb נתן (“give”) to state that these two types of vegetation have now been given to humans. God’s mention in 1:29 of both types of plants featured in plant creation of Gen 1:11–12, with the same wording and in the same order, implies that humans are given all plantlife for food.¹¹⁰ This would correspond to the sovereign place of humans as godlike rulers over God’s cosmos.

Genesis 1:30a continues God’s speech about food to humans, but shifts to tell humans about foods that earth’s animals are allowed to eat. The specific focus on animal food is highlighted by the prepositional phrase at the outset, indicating that this instruction excludes fish, focusing on restricting food for land-based animals—animals, birds, and creepers [likely various sorts of insects and reptiles]. The term used for their food, ירק עשב (“green vegetation”), indicates that these animals are only allowed to eat the grass or leaves on plants, thus not competing with humans for the calorie-rich seeds and fruits that form the center of most human agriculture. Nevertheless, it should be understood that this does not imply that humans are thus excluded from eating such greenery. Whatever limitation is given here is meant for animals, and God’s later post-flood instructions to humans that that they now may eat animals “like green vegetation” (9:3) implies that such green vegetation was always allowed for humans.

Thus, not only are humans implicitly forbidden from eating animals, but animals are implicitly forbidden (at least in the ideal world of Gen 1) from eating the sorts of grains and fruits that were cultivated as staples of the ancient Near Eastern human diet. In this way, Gen 1:29–30 depicts an initial “very good” world where humans and land animals should not compete for food. Later, the P prologue to the flood will note that the earth has been “corrupted” and “filled with violence,” and after the flood God will give animals to humans for food “like green vegetation” (כירק עשב; 9:3), thus negating the implicit veganism (for all earth creatures) in 1:29–30. Nevertheless, that time is yet to come. Genesis 1:29–30 depicts an ideal antediluvian world where humans and animals were meant to peaceably co-exist.

Food provisions sometimes appear in ancient descriptions of human creation, particularly Egyptian cosmogonic traditions, but those traditions do not feature this sort of differentiated divine instruction regarding human and animal food.¹¹¹ Within the nearby context, this speech about allowed foods underlines yet again the distinction that Gen 1 has already drawn between humans and other living creatures (e.g., 1:24–25 versus 1:26–27). In this case, 1:29–30 focuses on creatures, created on both day five and day six, who at least sometimes live on land (including birds). This means fish are excluded here, despite the fact that humans rule them (1:26, 28), because they do not live on land and thus would not have access to land plants. Again, the issue of shared habitat seems to be primary in the inclusion/exclusion of different animal groups.

Gen 1:30b–2:1. The Conclusion of Creation of the CosmosThe sixth day concludes with several elements seen previously, yet each with a slight alteration. Genesis 1:30b contains a statement of execution, ויהי כן (“and it was so”) that usually followed the initial divine statement of intention (thus expected after 1:26). Yet the placement of the correspondence formula at the end of the day here follows God’s further blessing to humans (1:28) and instructions regarding food (1:29), as if to emphasize that these divine wishes, too, were completed as intended. The different placement of the correspondence formula here and also in (most early witnesses of) 1:7 should caution us about having too uniform a view of its function vis-à-vis other elements in the creation reports.

The statement of divine approval in Gen 1:31a corresponds to the statements of divine approval that appear everywhere except in day two. Yet where most other such reports focus exclusively on a given creation act, asserting that “God saw that it was good” (וירא אלהים כי טוב), this expanded approval formula embraces the entire preceding creation and intensifies the statement of divine approval: “God saw all that he had made, and indeed it was very good” (וירא אלהים את כל אשר עשה והנה טוב מאד). This intensified statement thus serves to provide an extra emphasis on God’s approval not only of the creation of humanity (animals already had one in 1:25b), but also God’s multiplication blessing on humanity (1:28) and God’s provisions for peaceful coexistence of humans and animals (1:29–30). Furthermore, the expansion and intensification of the approval formula in this context gives a sense that the creation report is drawing to a close.

Before this report concludes, however, we have two elements. The first is the day formula seen before, but this time with the number of the day featuring a definite article, “the sixth day” (cf. “one day” [יום אחד 1:5; “a second day” יום שני 1:8; etc.). This shift is one indicator that a block of days is now concluded, but the text does not yet tell us more.

Finally, Gen 2:1 wraps things up by saying that “the heavens, the earth and all their array were completed” (ויכלו השמים והארץ וכל־צבאם), thus linking back to the reference to when God “created the heavens and the earth” at the very outset of the text (Gen 1:1). “Heaven and earth” are an expected pair, but the focus on “their array,” literally “their army” (צבאם) is unusual. Often the word צבא (“army”) is in construct with heaven alone, צבא שמים (“the army of heaven,” e.g., stars in Deut 4:19; 17:3). Genesis 2:1 seems to use a traditional word, צבא in an untraditional way to embrace the broader array of created things introduced in the prior creation acts, hence the translation “array” in this context. In Gen 1:1 it was enough to use the traditional pair “heaven and earth” to refer to the whole before they were created. Nevertheless, by Gen 2:1 both of these words, שמים (“heaven”) and ארץ (“earth”) are now linked explicitly by naming with more specific elements of the preceding creation, the heavenly plate (1:6–8) and the chunk of earth revealed when God had the waters gather (1:9–10). Therefore, in order to encompass the full range of other created things (e.g., sea, plants, heavenly bodies, sea and air creatures, land animals, humans), the author here recruits a word צבא (“army”) often used to refer to a broad array of stars or heavenly beings after an initial reference to “sun and moon” (e.g., Deut 4:19; 17:13; Jer 8:2) or “Baal and Asherah” (2 Kgs 23:4). This time, however, צבאם (“their array”) in 2:1 does not refer exclusively to heavenly bodies, as is indicated by the fact that it is preceded by the pair “heaven and earth” rather than the more traditional “sun and moon” or the like.¹¹²

Gen 2:2. God’s Ceasing of Work and Blessing and Sanctification of the Seventh DayThough the report of God’s creation work concludes with 2:1, Gen 2:2 seems to reopen the conclusion in order to introduce God’s anticipation of the later Sabbath. The core of the verse, the statement of God’s ceasing from God’s work on the seventh day in 2:2b, seems clear. As discussed in the translation commentary, it is less clear whether this statement about God’s stopping of work is preceded by a description of God concluding God’s work on the sixth day (so LXX, SP, and Peshitta) or on the seventh day (MT). Both readings are difficult, and neither is crucial for interpretation of the chapter. Either way, the statement in Gen 2:2a about God’s concluding God’s work merely introduces the following statement about God’s ceasing work on the seventh day (2:2b).

God then goes on to “bless” the seventh day and set it apart from the others (2:3). This use of the term ברך (“bless”) is somewhat unusual, since it does not directly refer in this case to God’s empowering of the life force of living beings.¹¹³ Perhaps on analogy with the idea of God’s institution of self-replicating life forms in Gen 1:11–28, this verse means to imply that God instituted a replicating seventh day, set apart in an ongoing way from the other six days of the week. Just as plants reproduced from seeds “each according to its kind” as do birds, sea and land creatures, so also God “blessed” this seventh day by not just resting on the initial seventh day, but “setting it apart” (קדש piel) in the future. Through this “blessing” and “setting aside” the seventh day thus becomes part of God’s creation order, though this day is distinguished from others by not quoting an initial divine decree. The divine speech is only implied in the verbs “bless” and “set aside.”

Nothing more is said here about how the seventh day is set apart. God never commands that anyone else cease work like God did on the seventh day. Indeed, there is no specific implication that God or anyone else will do so on another seventh day.¹¹⁴ Yet it is not a coincidence that interpreters have thought of later Sabbath commands to Israel when reading this text. The text’s descriptions of God’s prior creation work are infused with expressions used to describe six days of work in later Sabbath commands to Israel, such as “all of his work” (כל מלאכתו; Gen 2:2, 3)¹¹⁵ and “do work” עשה מלאכה (twice in 2:2), and the verb used here for God’s act on the seventh day is שבת (šbt “cease, stop”; 2:2, 3) rather than the more generic נוח (rest).¹¹⁶ Therefore, even though the noun “Sabbath” never occurs here and the Sabbath commands will only come much later to Israel (and be specific to Israel), this text suggests that some sort of ongoing Sabbath-oriented week structure was established already by God at creation when God “blessed” the seventh day by “set[ting] it apart” after doing “his work” for the previous six days.

The theme of divine rest after creation is seen in some famous Mesopotamian cosmogonies, such as the Atrahasis and Enuma Elish epics, but in those contexts a high god creates humanity as part of a project to ease labor originally done by lower deities.¹¹⁷ There is no such implication here. Genesis 1 gives no suggestion that God’s rule and creation-work was previously onerous. On the contrary, God’s sovereign creation speeches and immediate execution across Gen 1:3–27 convey a sense of effortless creation. Perhaps this is another reason why Gen 2:2–3 never uses the word “rest” that occasionally occurs in Sabbath commands (cf. Exod 23:12 and Deut 5:14). Instead, Gen 2:2 merely echoes the word “Sabbath” by using the verb šābat to describe God’s “ceasing” from God’s work on the seventh day. This avoids any implication here that God might need to “rest” from being tired from creating the cosmos by command(s).