What Does Genesis 1:11 Mean?

The deliberative form, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," marks the creation of humanity as the intentional climax of the creative week. Every previous creative act was issuing a command ("Let there be...," "Let the waters teem..."); this one is a council. The "us" has been interpreted as a majestic plural, as address to a divine heavenly court, and by Christian theology as a Trinitarian conversation; what is unambiguous is that the act is deliberated rather than simply commanded. Humanity's creation is the one creative act across which God pauses before he acts.

The two Hebrew words for the image, tselem ("image," a concrete representation like a statue or portrait) and demuth ("likeness," a resemblance), together describe the creature who is made to function as God's representative in the created order. The verse immediately grounds the image in dominion: "and let them have dominion over the Fish..." The image is not primarily about rational faculties or spiritual qualities but about governance. The human being is the vicegerent of the Creator, the one placed in the created world to exercise the Creator's ordering authority over it.

The creation of male and female together in the same verse as the image statement means that both Bear the image equally and jointly. The imago Dei does not attach exclusively to the male or to the female but to the human creature as constituted in the male-female pair. Colossians 1:15 will call Jesus "the image of the invisible God," and 2 Corinthians 3:18 describes the believer being transformed "into the same image from one degree of glory to another." The image that Genesis 1:27 grants at creation is the image that the new creation restores and perfects.