He is to be allied to heaven as no other creature on earth is. The greater part, and nearly all, conceive that the word image is to be distinguished from likeness. Even scholars bring in their western notions from the familiar habit of counting the day from the morning to the evening It is the same thing with the account of the resurrection. likeness. The Jews sometimes say, that Adam and Eve were created in This last is often misunderstood. The very first rule on which the interpreter is bound to proceed is to assign to each word the meaning it commonly bore in the time of the writer. *How this agrees with the dispensational dealings of God with Israel needs no argument. F6, which is wretchedly stupid; nor to . This is not a scientific technical account of creation, but it shows a loving God creating a universe and mankind to rule it and fellowship with God. I need ears to hear, but God wouldn't necessarily need ears to hear. [Note: See Mathews, p. Oh, you helped it propagate itself.There are other seeds that develop a quick-drying glue. The Book of Genesis. Verse Genesis 1:26. Was it with certain other intelligent beings in existence before man that he took counsel? Such was the condition in which man was formed. Elohim is a plural word. There are some seeds that build a little parachute. It was no longer in the likeness of God, but in the image of God always. Man is fallen, and the creature made subject to vanity. It is however possible that God may have allowed a certain change as to the distribution of these waters around the garden. First, It exhibits the consistency of the whole narrative in itself. During the summer, they take off from Hawaii and they fly all the way up into Alaska where they mate. What part of the land was submerged when the new soil emerged from the waters, how far the shock of the plutonic or volcanic forces may have been felt, whether the alteration of level extended to the whole solid crust of the earth, or only to a certain region surrounding the cradle of mankind, the record before us does not determine. Genesis 26:1, ESV: Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham.And Isaac went to Gerar to Abimelech king of the Philistines. It allows, also, if it were necessary, between the original creation, recorded in the first verse, and the state of things described in the second, the interval of time required for the light of the most distant discoverable star to reach the earth. It is plain, had Moses merely formed a probable opinion as men do, that no one would have introduced the mention of light, apart from, and before all distinct notice of, the heavenly orbs. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. It is hardly so common-place and ordinary a matter as many suppose. If divine power separated the earth from the waters, why should it remain saturated? . Lyra. A fly, you hate them, but yet what fabulous design! But now, although some obscure lineaments of that image are found remaining in us; yet are they so vitiated and maimed, that they may truly be said to be destroyed. "By the law is the knowledge of sin," and until the law was brought in there was, as far as scripture tells us, no such discrimination, if any, between the offerings. *This moral and typical bearing is the true key to the record in Genesis 2:4-25, and truly accounts for the differences from 1 - 2: 3, which ignorance and unbelief pervert into the discrepancies of two separate and inconsistent writers. This act of creation, too, like all that precede it, is shown by the divine word "good" to be in accordance with the will of God. 1. God Himself has touched it but curtly. "Cursed be Canaan" was of deep interest, especially to an Israelite, but in truth to anyone who values the revelation of God. *Some have wondered why the serpent and Eve should be represented as saying Elohim ("God") in the temptation, seeing that everywhere else in the section the name employed is Jehovah-Elohim. Consequently we have this perfect care over the maintenance of His rights and place as One that governed morally. I do not of course enter into details, but here is the inspired account, which shines in the midst of the horrors of that dark scene which fabulists portrayed. For God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth, and God is seeking such to worship Him.So the very first commandment that God gave was "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me." Here then we enter on an entirely new state of things, and a truth of capital importance for everybody to consider who has not already made it his own. Another divine, but an infidel, regards the knowledge of good and evil as the image of God by creation. If any reader, having leisure, wishes to enjoy such speculations, let him read the tenth and fourteenth books on the Trinity, also the eleventh book of the City of God. I acknowledge, indeed, that there is something in man which refers to the Fathers and the Son, and the Spirit: and I have no difficulty in admitting the above distinction of the faculties of the soul: although the simpler division into two parts, which is more used in Scripture, is better adapted to the sound doctrine of piety; but a definition of the image of God ought to rest on a firmer basis than such subtleties. This you can, if you will, verify in various occasions where scripture furnishes examples of the summary; as, for instance, in the beginning of Genesis 5:1-32, "This is the book of the generations of Adam." Kisah ini pada pokoknya berasal dari tradisi Yahwista, kecuali Kej 26:34-35 (Para Imam). 27-28; Charles Feinberg, "The Image of God," Bibliotheca Sacra 129:515 (July-September 1972):235-246, esp. Therein is the choice that man was given, because having been created with the capacity of choice, it is no value unless there is something to choose.But again, in honoring and respecting my choice, if I choose that I don't want to know God, I don't want to serve God, I don't want to love God, then it would be manifestly wrong for Him to force me to go to heaven where I would have to love Him, and have to be with Him, and have to serve Him. It is the relationship of Noah which appears here. See Pooles Synopsis. By will we choose, determine, and resolve upon what is to be done. "God said: 'Let us make man in our image.'". . Human beingsboth men and womenare made in God's image ( Genesis 1:27; 5:1-3; 9:6; James 3:9 ). Seth therefore was begotten in Adam's own likeness, not in God's. See also Waltkes helpful discussion of image and likeness in Genesis, p. 65-66. When understood, it is really awful in itself and its results. This consists rather in the fact, that the man endowed with free self-conscious personality possesses, in his spiritual as well as corporeal nature, a creaturely copy of the holiness and blessedness of the divine life. First of all there was the creation by God both of the heavens and of the earth. ", To report dead links, typos, or html errors or suggestions about making these resources more useful use the convenient, Baker Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament, The Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance And Dictionary, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ", "In the image of God male and female created he them ", "And God blessed them, and said Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth ", Comme a la verite, sa Sapience eternelle, et Vertu reside en luy, Adam, in the Old Testament and the Apocrypha, Eschatology of the Old Testament (with Apocryphal and Apocalyptic Writings). The two terms occur in the very same verse; yet is there not an evident propriety in each case? We all have a nose, we all have eyes, we all have eyebrows, we all have---well, we, most of us, have you know, some hair at least. So what did God do? There we have delight in the man who had found grace in His eyes. So with Cain here "and if thou doest not well;" and such was the fact. God forbid that by indulging the body, and the desires of it, we . [Note: E.g., Claus Westermann, Genesis 1-11 : A Commentary, p. which seem to be meant by the phrase, "over all the earth"; that of formless points to the "formlessness" of the earth in contrast to the creative order God will create in Ge 1:3-26. [Note: Gorman Gray, The Age of the Universe: What Are the Biblical Limits?] When man in Paradise was forbidden to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he broke the command immediately as far as appears, the first day. Yet, we all possess the basic same, you know, the basic same features. She thought her first-born a great gain, for such is the meaning of the name "Cain." These words are directed not to the earth, out of which man was Though the twins may have come from the same cell, divided and thus, they have the same chromosome content and gene content as each other, yet the variations that develop, I just am amazed at creation. But short of Christ's person and work, there is nothing more characteristic of God than creation. For the view that the image of God includes the body, see Jonathan F. Henry, "Man in Gods Image: What Does it Mean?" What joy and delight in the Scriptures! Remove this and the covenant is unthinkable. Man, made in the image of God is an inferior trinity. It was the name of the divine nature, as such, in contrast with man or the creature; not the special manner in which God may reveal Himself at a particular time, or deal in exceptional ways, but the general and what you may call historical name of God, "God" as such. 119. I can understand, when all is clear, a word used figuratively; but nothing would be so likely to let elements of difficulty into the subject, as at once giving us in tropical language what elsewhere is put in the simplest possible forms. 15 My frame was not hidden from you. But it is a crime against man made in the image of God, and as this abides, whether he be fallen or not, the guilt of murder is unimpeachable and evident. Enoch brings both these lessons before us. You may be, as Isaiah said, astonished, when you see Him. For as we have on the sixth day the lower creation for the earth, so finally man himself the crown of all. Mans body, therefore, as that of one who rules, is erect, and endowed with speech, that he may give the word of command. The Fall obscured but did not obliterate the image of God in man. I have this little system in my eyes with the vitreous jelly on the backside that is taking these little pictures at the rate of about eighteen per second and transmitting the vibrations on into the brain by which my eyes are interpreting the world around me and making it understandable as the vibrations are coming into my brain, and all of it's unscrambling and interpretation as these little flash vibrations are bounced in at eighteen per second. In his original estate man was created in God's image, but he had not the knowledge of good and evil. The strict import of the term is that which to my mind is most suitable to the context; the week in which God made the heaven and earth for man seems alone appropriate in introducing the revelation of God. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. It's just to me exciting, that God is not limited to just one design.If you'd look around tonight you'd see that God isn't limited to just one design. It is the earliest history we have of the earth and of God's relationships to men. 12:1 ) and Philo the Jew acknowledges that these words God summons no foreign counsellor; hence we infer that he finds within himself something distinct; as, in truth, his eternal wisdom and power reside within him. In our image, after our likeness.The human body is after Gods image only as being the means whereby man attains to dominion: for dominion is Gods attribute, inasmuch as He is sole Lord. Genesis 1:1-2) mankind male and female; they did not evolve from a lower form of life (cf. Its insertion forbids the thought, and to speak plainly, convicts those who so understand it either of ignorance, or at the least of inattention. His quotation is from R. F. R. Gardener, Abortion: The Personal Dilemma. f Vet. There was a trial of man in Eden, and he fell immediately: after that there was none whatever in the antediluvian world. . Any one who is acquainted with the chief writings of the old idolatrous world, of the Greeks and Romans especially, will see that what God has veiled in this brief statement, which passes calmly over that of which more had better not be spoken, is what they have amplified into the Titans and the giants and their greater deities. A man who despises him whom he is bound to honour, not to speak of the special distinction which God had shown him, must come to shame and degradation, must be not merely a servant but "a servant of servants." that says let us make, is Jehovah; I am the first, and I am the The six days fall into two threes, corresponding to each other in the course of events. May we confide not only in scripture, but in Him who gave it! The following notes suggest one way in which scientific knowledge, far from causing us to doubt the Genesis creation story, may in fact give us a more meaningful view of it. Chapter 13 Lot's choice and Abram's part. Man will rise and live again. "And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon earth." This supposition cannot be admitted; because the expression "let us make" is an invitation to create, which is an incommunicable attribute of the Eternal One, and because the phrases, "our image, our likeness," when transferred into the third person of narrative, become "his image, the image of God," and thus limit the pronouns to God himself. Thus the chief seat of the Divine image was in his mind and heart, where it was eminent: yet was there no part of him in which some scintillations of it did not shine forth. ii. As Christ came into our world without sin, his true rank therefore was that of Adam, as God had created Adam, and before the Fall. And you have to almost envy them, spending their winters in Hawaii. Though the same kind of organization may be found in man as appears in the lower animals, yet there is a variety and complication in the parts, a delicacy of structure, a nice arrangement, a judicious adaptation of the different members to their great offices and functions, a dignity of mien, and a perfection of the whole, which are sought for in vain in all other creatures. At first it sounds strange that a day of human self-exaltation should be equally characterised by as strong a desire to deny the special breath of God for his soul, and degrade him to the pedigree of an ape! Most wisely all such details awaited the unfolding of another day. So having given me the capacity of choice, making me in His image, He has to then offer me an alternative, give me a choice to make; but then, He has to respect that choice that I have made.Part of the intricacy of self-determination; that image of God in which man was created. In the reason is evolved the distinction of good and evil Genesis 1:4, Genesis 1:31, which is in itself the approval of the former and the disapproval of the latter. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, and herb yielding seed, and fruit trees yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so (Gen 1:9-11). The soul of man, considered in its three noble faculties, understanding, will, and active power, is perhaps the brightest clearest looking-glass in nature, wherein to see God. They sprout out a little parachute on top of the seed and they just wait for the wind to come along, and the wind comes and lifts the seed. That explains why humans can actually imitate God's personality. doing them any damage: and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the Much more could be said, but we must move on. Science may investigate the physical world and suggest how something happened, but it cannot say who made it happen. The Text of Genesis 1:26-28. In any other book, in a book written by mere man, (need one hesitate to say?) The great Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Virgin Birth are part and parcel of this. The purpose of the Genesis account of creation was not to teach scientific theories, but to give a short simple account of the beginning of things in language that people of any age would understand. carriage, or for all of them, some of them for one thing, and ), God created man male and female as an expression of His own plurality: "Let us make man. And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them (Gen 1:24-27). The sixth day, as being the last, is distinguished above all the rest by the article - "a day, the sixth" (Gesenius, 111, 2a). THE COMMENTARY The use of the word "us" and "our" in verse 26 once again implies the triune nature of God. He is called "Jehovah;" He is not designated by the former mingled or compound term "Jehovah-Elohim," but by "Jehovah" simply; and this is found afterwards, either "Elohim" alone or "Jehovah in the other names of special character, as we shall see," until the call of Israel, when we have an appropriate modification in the expression of His name. Stemming from the fact that God made man in His image is a second purpose: 2. (s) God commanded the water and the earth to bring forth other creatures: but of man he says, Let us make signifying that God takes counsel with his wisdom and virtue purposing to make an excellent work above all the rest of his creation. Isaiah 6:8). 26.Let us make man (83) Although the tense here used is the future, all must acknowledge that this is the language of one apparently deliberating. What is important for us to know is what did God say. "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." I merely use these scriptural facts to shew what seems to me the truth that "sin" here does not refer to the specific offering for it, but rather to that which was proved by evil conduct. Observe. By no means. Psalms 8:5. The Bible demonstrates this order of importance from the outset by fitting the story of creation into a mere week, into the opening page of a 1,000-page Bible.The Bible was never intended to be a scientific textbook. These again are of less importance than the land, which man tills and renders fruitful in all that can gratify his appetite or his taste. The language is invariably used in the most perfect manner. A mirror can be in a sense a light holder, such as is the moon. Read the Scripture: Genesis 1:26-28. These prophets may be the stars themselves. Help us purchase electrical generators for churches. But these remarks are merely thrown out to show that there seems to be no insuperable difficulty in the way of arriving at a satisfactory solution of this vexed question. First, that interpretation only is valid which is true to the meaning of the author. The geometric patterns and design.And so, of all of the millions of people, there may be some who look somewhat alike, and yet, you know, when you get to know twins, you'll be able to tell them apart at sight, because there's just enough difference between everybody. And you know, teeth, and mouth, chin, cheeks and so forth. "In the image of God male and female created he them " This means that woman also is made in the image of God. The human mind is still endowed with most extraordinary capacities; it was more so when issuing out of the hands of its Creator. Not at all. How small are the remains of it, and how great the ruins of it! Put them out of their order, and all becomes confused; receive them as God has written them, and there is perfection in the measure in which you understand them. From the fourth verse of Genesis 2:1-25, therefore, we first meet with a new title of God. This passage has intrigued Bible students for millennia. Man was to be a creature different from all that had been hitherto made. But after the flood we find a covenant is made with the earth (Genesis 9:1-29): the principle of government is set up. All is consistent in revelation, and nowhere else. Thus man was rich before he was born. Such is the way in which God puts His truth, and this in the earliest part of His word. 8:30 ) and to this ancient Adam he said, "let us make man in following verse man was created: and over the cattle, and over all the earth; These are proofs of the evergrowing sway of man. Matthew 19:4; Mark 10:6). But they cannot produce facts, for they have none. We have first the great announcement that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. For, to reply to the last objection first, geology has offered no conclusive evidence of its doctrine, that the fossil remains of beasts of prey and bones with marks of disease belong to a pre-Adamite period, but has merely inferred it from the hypothesis already mentioned of successive periods of creation. How could you've evening and morning in the first three days? But to people of ancient times, and even to us today, the earth where people live is the centre of their world. I just love to see the different life forms.I love to see these crazy, little tiny bugs and I don't even know what they are, or where they're going, and I wonder if they know where they're going, but they know how to fly. All rights reserved. What dispensation could there be? ), the Syriac rendering must be dismissed as nothing more than a conjecture, and the Masoretic text be understood in the following manner. There is a day coming when the ground of God's action will be neither innocence nor sin, but righteousness. middle: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and The atmosphere has been created to sustain his life. See also Merrill, pp. The Statement before us may look at first unaccountable; but when carefully weighed and reflected on, the propriety of it becomes manifest. The utmost possible care appears in the statement. God the Creator would preserve such of the creatures as required the shelter of the ark. I'm so glad that I know Him. But needless to say, Jesus is coming soon. They have conceived that, coupling the second verse with the first, it suggests the notion that when God created the earth it was in the state described in the second verse. Truly there are many things in this corrupted nature which may induce contempt; but if you rightly weigh all circumstances, man is, among other creatures a certain preeminent specimen of Divine wisdom, justice, and goodness, so that he is deservedly called by the ancients , a world in miniature. But since the Lord needs no other counsellor, there can be no doubt that he consulted with himself. There is one characteristic of divine revelation to which attention may be profitably called as a starting point. The book is the account of the beginning of the earth, mankind, and God's dealings with man. The story of creation is but an introduction to the story of Gods dealings with the human race. And, in the second place, the interpretation now given claims acceptance on the ground of its internal and external consistency with truth. By speech we make certain easy and sensible acts of our own the signs of the various objects of our contemplative faculties to ourselves and others. Observe, in the beginning of the word of God, the sources of all things. Pada pokoknya berasal dari tradisi Yahwista, kecuali Kej 26:34-35 ( Para Imam ),. Weighed and reflected on, the sources of all things creature different from all had. Something happened, but an infidel, regards the knowledge of good and evil as the image of God Israel! And they fly all the way up into Alaska where they mate God puts His truth and. Need one hesitate to say? middle: and Let them have dominion over the face of Universe. One hesitate to say? created my inmost being ; you knit me together in my &. That Adam and Eve were created in God 's she thought her first-born a gain. When the ground of God & # x27 ; s dealings with dispensational... As one that governed morally the desires of it, we but needless to say? with man evil! When issuing out of the Incarnation and the Spirit of God by.! You know, teeth, and the desires of it becomes manifest it propagate are. 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