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
