What Does Genesis 1:26 Mean?
And God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And 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 fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.THE KEY
Humanity’s authority over the earth is grounded in a likeness received from God and shared across the human family.
THE MEANING
You are part of a humanity made in God’s image and likeness, with the living world placed under human care and rule. The verse holds identity and authority together: humanity’s dominion belongs to the shared likeness, not to one person alone.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that human authority is self-made or belongs only to the strongest; the verse roots it in a likeness shared by all humanity.
THE ROOT
אָדָם
adam
GROWS FROM
אדם
ʾ-d-m
A word-family tied to the human and, in Genesis 2, explicitly echoed by the ground.
“humankind” in this verse is adam. The name for the human shares its consonants with the word for ground: humanity is earth-formed, not detached from the earth it is given to govern. The image-bearing human remains a creature within the whole creation.
ALSO GROWS
adamah: ground, soil
אֲדָמָה
The shared consonants link the human to the ground from which humanity is formed, keeping dominion rooted in creaturely life.
adom: red
אָדֹם
This related word carries the same consonants and shows the wider word-family; the human-to-ground echo is the clearest link in the creation account.
דְּמוּת
demut
GROWS FROM
דמה
d-m-h
To be like or resemble.
Likeness comes from the verb for resembling, so the verse describes a correspondence with God. The shared resemblance is joined directly to humanity’s commission over the living world.
ALSO GROWS
damah: to be like, resemble
דָּמָה
The verb shows that likeness names a relation of resemblance, not a separate possession.
dimyon: likeness, resemblance
דִּמְיוֹן
This related noun keeps the focus on correspondence, clarifying what the verse means by being made in God’s likeness.
THE PATTERN
Human authority over creation is entrusted to beings made in God’s image, a likeness that remains shared across humanity.
And the LORD God shaped the ground-being, Adam, from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul.You make him rule over the works of your hands; you place all things under his feet.With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who have been made according to the likeness of God.THE THREAD
And the LORD God shaped the ground-being, Adam, from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul.The Hebrew word for the human echoes the Hebrew word for ground: the earth-formed human is the one made in God’s image. This opens dominion as an embodied human vocation within creation, not a status detached from it.
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