Genesis 1:27

The context

Genesis 1:27 is the center of the sixth day. Verse 26 records God's deliberation — "let us make" — and the commission to rule. Verse 27 restates the creation of humanity in a compact three-line poem, the first poetic unit in the Bible. Verse 28 gives the blessing and the command to fill and subdue the earth.

The line stands at the climax of the seven-day account: everything before is preparation, everything after is the ordering of a world humanity is given.

The words

Ṣelem, "image," is the word for a statue. In the ancient Near East a king was commonly called the image of his god; Genesis takes that royal language and applies it to all humanity, with no king in sight. Dĕmût, "likeness," is a near-synonym alongside it, not usually a separate faculty.

Bārāʾ, "create," appears three times in the verse with the object shifting; the repetition gives the line its liturgical weight.

The grammar matters. The first two lines use a singular object, "him"; the third says "male and female he created them," with a plural suffix. The movement from singular to plural compresses the collective and the individual together: humanity as a whole, and the two sexes within it, both bearing what the first line assigns.

Zākār ûnĕqēbâ, "male and female," names biological sex, not social role; both are recipients of the image.

What this passage establishes

Every human being bears God's image, and the image is not the possession of a class, a sex, or a nation. The verse grounds human dignity in creation rather than achievement, and it grounds it equally in both sexes, stated in the same breath as the image itself.

What it does not establish

It does not define the content of the image. Reason, moral capacity, relationality, dominion, and immortality have all been proposed; the text names none of them. Any account of what the image is is inference.

It does not say the image was destroyed at the fall. Genesis 9:6 grounds the prohibition of murder in the image of God after the flood, which tells against reading it as erased. The extent of its damage is a doctrinal question, not a textual one.

It does not settle the "let us" of verse 26. A divine council, a plural of deliberation, and a trinitarian address are all argued, and verse 27 does not comment. Nor does the verse resolve questions about gender roles; it asserts equal bearing, not identical function.

How the church has read it

Irenaeus distinguished image from likeness, treating the first as given in creation and the second as grown into through the Spirit; Gregory of Nyssa developed the distinction as a doctrine of endless progress. Augustine located the image chiefly in the mind and, in De Trinitate, in the soul's rational structure. Reformation writers held it defaced but not annulled, and modern Catholic teaching has made the verse the foundation of human dignity.

First pass, written October 2026. Corrections welcome.

Cited in these answers

• I am homosexual and I was born homosexual – don't homosexuals have the right NOT to be hated and persecuted by the church?
• How do you reconcile creation and science?
• What’s so special about Jesus, anyway? Aren’t we ALL God’s children?!
• If those who die as infants go to Heaven, why doesn't God kill everyone in infancy in order to maximize the number of those in Heaven?
• How can human language be used to correctly characterize an infinite God?
• So you believe in a book full of contradictions, one that endorses slavery, incest, murder, drowning babies, genocide and stoning homosexuals?
• So you believe in a book full of contradictions, one that endorses slavery, incest, murder, drowning babies, genocide and stoning homosexuals?

Part of Scripture, Opened — the exegetical layer behind every citation on this site. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.