THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN - Tyndale House

66 TYNDALE BULLETIN
he is a holy God ( םיִ ׁש ֹודְק םיִהֹל ֱא)'
he is perhaps using the plural
sarcastically, since he has just encouraged the people, if they
are unwilling to serve Yahweh, to choose which of the heathen
gods they are acquainted with they will worship.
We thus consider the explanation of the plural of Genesis 1:26
as a plural of majesty to be not very convincing on the ground
of the absence or near-absence of parallels in verbs or pronouns
in the Old Testament.
4. Address to the heavenly court
We have already noticed one instance (Is. 6:8) where'Yahweh
includes His heavenly court (seraphim) within an 'us'; many
references depicting Yahweh as a king surrounded by couriers,
sometimes themselves called םיִהֹל ֱא may be found in the Old
Testament, 59 so it would seem natural to take the plural here
as inclusive of the heavenly beings. Many modern scholars
accept that this is the correct explanation of the plural. 60
This view, however, suffers, from some serious difficulties. It
would imply that man was made in the image of the elohim as
well as of God Himself (‘in our image’); 61 it would mean that
the elohim shared in the creation of man (׳let us make׳); there
would be a conflict between the plural of verse 26 and the
singular of verse 27; there has been no previous mention of the
heavenly court in the chapter; 62 and, for what it is worth, there
is no other place in the ‘P’ strand of the Pentateuch where
angels or heavenly court are mentioned. 63
We can hardly avoid the difficulty by adopting the ingenious
rabbinic explanation that man was not actually made by the
angels in their image, for after God afforded them the opportunity,
they declined, on the grounds that this was too important
a creative act for them to be associated with, whereupon
59
Cf. e.g. F. M. Cross, ‘The Council of Yahweh in Second Isaiah', JNES 12
(1953) 274-277.
60
So G. von Rad, Genesis 57; T. C. Vriezen, OTS 2 (1943) 90; H. Gross, 'Die
Gottebenbildlichkeit des Menschen' 95.
61
The difficulty is not solved by saying that man is elohimlike (H. Renckens,
Israel's Concept of the Beginning 125; G. von Rad, Genesis 57), for the image is not
primarily a matter of likeness (see pp. 90ff. below).
62
In other references to the heavenly court (e. g. 1 Ki. 22:19f.; Jb. 1; Is. 6) we
usually find a description of it (U. Cassuto, Genesis I 55).
63
W. H. Schmidt, Schöpfungsgeschichte 129; V. Maag, ‘Alttestamentliche
Anthropogonie in ihrem Verhältnis zur altorientalischen Mythologie' Asiatische
Studien 9 (1955) 15-44, especially 29.