The Image צֶלֶם
Start where the word lives
What is “the image of God”? Start with how tselem is used when nobody is being theological: it usually means a statue or an idol — a physical stand-in that represents its owner. Ancient kings set up their image in provinces they ruled but never visited. Now read day six again: God sets up his image — living ones — and the very same sentence hands them dominion.
The king is not in the room. His ring presses his image into the wax, and the letter carries his authority anyway. An image is authority, standing in for its owner.
The verse’s own next move
Image — then immediately, dominion. The text cashes the word out as an office: God’s representatives, ruling his world on his behalf.
Jesus’ coin runs on the same logic: the image marks whose a thing is. Caesar’s image, Caesar’s coin. And the half he leaves hanging in the air: you bear God’s image — render yourself.
The image passes down a line, like a face. Sonship and image are one fabric in Genesis — which is why Luke can call Adam “the son of God.”
And when the image is renewed, what gets renewed? Knowledge. Righteousness and holiness, says the parallel in Ephesians. What Scripture renews reads like a calling.
The Image stands beside Adam in Day 6’s corner of the sky.
Open the heavens →The text never defines the image outright; we are reading its cash-out (“let them have dominion”) and the word’s usage. Scholars well outside our camp — Middleton, Walton, Beale — read the image as royal-representative too; we cite them as witnesses to the vocabulary, never as supporters of our conclusions. The old debates about body and soul are real discussions — they are simply not this page’s claim.