Genesis Deeper ⑥ The Day the Land Filled and People Were Made — what does "in the image of God" mean? (Genesis 1:24-31)
A series that takes one Bible passage at a time and looks a little deeper. Every post comes with images you are free to use in worship, class, or on social media.
God said, “Let the earth produce living creatures after their kind, livestock, creeping things, and animals of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. … God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, … and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them. … God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
— Genesis 1:24, 26–27, 31 (World English Bible, public domain)
1. The last place still standing empty
The first three days of Genesis 1 are days that make places. Light is divided from darkness, an expanse becomes the sky, the waters gather and land appears. From day four on, God fills those places. Lights are hung in the sky. The sea fills with fish and the sky with birds.
So what is still empty? The dry land that appeared on day three. Grass and trees have already come up, but nothing walks on any of it. Day six fills that last place.
And it is the longest day in Genesis 1. Day one and day two get three verses each, day five gets four — day six gets eight. God also speaks four separate times on this day (vv. 24, 26, 28, 29). No earlier day speaks more than twice. The Bible lingers over this one day longer than any other.
2. The command goes to the earth, the making is credited to God
In verse 24 the word goes to the earth. “Let the earth produce living creatures after their kind…” Day three worked the same way: “Let the earth yield grass, herbs yielding seeds, and fruit trees…”
What the earth is told to bring out comes in three groups: livestock, creeping things, and animals of the earth. And the same phrase from day five is attached again — and in verse 25 it is repeated three times: “after their kind.”
But something changes in verse 25. The subject shifts. On day three the command went to the earth and so did the result: “The earth yielded grass… and trees” (v. 12). The earth is credited with the work. On day six only the command goes to the earth. The result is written down like this: “God made the animals of the earth after their kind…” (v. 25).
Then in verse 26 the manner of speaking changes again. Until now it has been commands — let there be, let it be divided, let it produce. Here it is “Let us make man… and let them have dominion.” Not an order issued to something, but something more like a deliberation from within.
And in verse 27 the human being is made. Same day as the animals, out of the same ground. Only the way it is written down is different.
3. Going deeper — what does “in the image of God” actually mean?
Read this passage with children and one question comes up almost every time. “So does God look like us?”
Start with what the Bible does not do. Genesis never defines the image. It does not say a face, or the ability to think, or a conscience. Verses 26 and 27 simply say we were made in it, and move on.
In Hebrew ‘image’ is tselem (צֶלֶם) and ‘likeness’ is demuth (דְּמוּת). Verse 26 reads betsalmenu kidmuthenu (בְּצַלְמֵנוּ כִּדְמוּתֵנוּ) — after our tselem, according to our demuth.
The Bible does not explain the word, but it does set something right beside it. Read verse 26 to the end. Straight after the image comes this: “and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky…” Image and dominion sit inside one sentence.
Many scholars read it against a practice of the ancient Near East, where a king would set up an image of himself in a distant province he could not visit, so that those who stood before it would see his rule. Read that way, ‘image’ is less about a resembling face and more about standing somewhere on behalf of someone.
And Genesis gives that standing place not to one king but to human beings. Verse 27 goes out of its way to add a line: “male and female he created them.” It is not something one holds and the other borrows.
The word behind dominion is radah (רָדָה), and verse 28 goes further still with “subdue it.” Both are words with force in them. But the strength of someone who stands on another’s behalf is not his own. What it is for is answered by the very next verses. In verses 29 and 30 God assigns food — to the people, and to the animals and birds and creeping things as well. The first thing God does after saying “have dominion” is feed.
One thing the Bible does not say. Genesis 1 never tells us who “us” refers to in verse 26. There are readings that have been discussed for a very long time, but we will not settle here what the text does not settle. Where the Bible stops, we stop too.
What the text does say is clear enough. The image is not something a person earned by achieving anything. Verse 27 says it was given at the moment of making. It was already there in someone who had not yet done a single thing.
4. Words — made, created, and very good
“Made” in verse 25 is wayya‘as (וַיַּעַשׂ); the form you find in a dictionary is asah (עָשָׂה). It is the ordinary word for making something. But “created” in verse 27 is wayyivra (וַיִּבְרָא), from bara (בָּרָא).
In all of Genesis 1 bara appears in only three places: the heavens and the earth in verse 1, the sea creatures and birds in verse 21, and the human being in verse 27. In all three the subject is God. And verse 27 goes one step further: bara occurs three times inside that single verse — created, created, created.
Verse 31 also breaks the pattern. Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21 and 25 all carry the same sentence in English and in Hebrew alike: “God saw that it was good.” In verse 31 three things are added at once.
① An object appears. Eth kol asher asah (אֶת־כָּל־אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה), “everything that he had made.” The last time the seeing had an object was verse 4, when God saw the light.
② Hinneh (הִנֵּה) is added — “behold.”
③ Me’od (מְאֹד) is added — “very.” It appears once in the whole chapter, here.
This is not the look of one day being reviewed. It is the whole thing seen at once.
The closing line carries one more mark. The first five days read yom echad (יוֹם אֶחָד), yom sheni (יוֹם שֵׁנִי) and so on, with no article. Verse 31 alone reads yom hashishi (יוֹם הַשִּׁשִּׁי) — with the article ha (הַ) in front. Rendered woodenly it is “the sixth day.” That the grammar singles this day out is as far as the text takes us.
5. There was evening and there was morning, a sixth day
That long day closes with the sentence it has always used. “There was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.” A human being was made on it, and still the ending does not change. Same place in the paragraph, same order as the five days before it.
What is added is one word, “very,” and one article. That is as far as the Bible raises its voice. And then evening comes, and morning comes.
6. For us today
What stays with you from day six is the order of things. The human being had done nothing yet — no ground worked, no names given, nothing done well. And the image was given before any of it.
We tend to count it the other way around. We decide what our place is worth by how much we got done today, and on days when we managed nothing the place itself seems to shrink. Genesis 1 does not write it that way. A place you did not earn by doing well is not a place you lose by doing badly.
And the first thing God did after saying “have dominion” was to feed. Most of what we have been given looks like that too — feeding a child, saying a student’s name out loud, seeing a task through to the end. Not glamorous. But that was the first content of dominion.
Last, “very good” was not said over one person held up on their own. It was said over everything that he had made. However scattered today has been, we are standing inside the world God looked at whole and called good.
“God who made us in your image, help me remember that you gave me this place before I had achieved anything at all. Let me hold what you have entrusted to me with feeding, caring hands rather than a heavy one. However scattered this day has been, let me believe that I am standing inside the world you looked at whole and called very good. Amen.”
🕊 Using this in ministry
Opening question
“What do you think it means that we are made like God?” When answers come back about faces, height or strength, follow with “where does the Bible put that phrase?” and read Genesis 1:26 all the way to the end together.
Activity
Put the empty land image on screen first and ask “the sea has fish and the sky has birds — what is missing here?” Have them cut out and tape up the animals they name, then switch to the image full of animals. Then open the story of the human being with “but God made one more thing on this day.”
Application
Put the man and woman on the hill image on screen and ask “what do you look after?” Take the answers — a younger sibling, a pet, a plant, a corner of the classroom — then read Genesis 1:28–30 together. Make just one point: having dominion turns into feeding and looking after.
🖼️ Today’s four images · press and hold or right-click to save
The land nothing walked on yet |
Let the earth produce living creatures |
In the image of God |
Behold, it was very good |
📄 Image licence CC0 (Public Domain) · Use, modify and redistribute freely, no attribution required.
🤖 These images were created with AI (Grok).
🎨 Week 1 Creation — 28 free images — transparent PNG · CC0, day one through day seven
🇰🇷 한국어 · 🇺🇸 English (current) · 🇰🇭 ភាសាខ្មែរ
Origin Bible · Mission Zedero
Contact joypej@gmail.com
✍️ This article was written with the help of AI and reviewed by a person.
Article text is CC BY-NC 4.0 — free for non-commercial use with attribution.
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