Genesis 1:27

Bara and Tselem

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Genesis 1:27, KJV)

While the above is a common translation for this verse, it contains two words that when translated from a Hebraic perspective, illuminate the passage in a new light. The first word is ברא (bara), which in this verse cannot mean “create something from nothing,” because the following verse would contradict this translation:

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Genesis 2:7, KJV)

God did not create the man out of nothing; instead he formed him out of the ground. With our new understanding of the word, ברא he filled him with his image, which brings us to the next word.

In other passages, the word צלם (tselem), translated as “image” above, is also translated as “idol,” which is an “image” of a god. A more Hebraic understanding of the word would be “shadow.” An idol is meant to be a “shadow” of the original, a representation, just as a “shadow” is the image of the original. We can now read the above passage as:

So God filled the man with his shadow, with the shadow of God he filled him; male and female he filled them. (Genesis 1:27)

Man was formed from the dust of the ground, but unlike the other animals, man was shaped to be a shadow of God. All that God is, we were made to duplicate, just as a shadow duplicates the original. Genesis 2:7, quoted above, states that man was filled with God’s breath. From an ancient Hebrew perspective, the breath is the character of the person; therefore, the shadow of God is the same as his character. God filled the man with his own breath, his own character.