Image as Vocation
Genesis, Idolatry, and the Calling of Humanity
Letting Genesis Set the Terms
Discussions of the image of God often begin in familiar places. We are told that to be made in God’s image means that humans possess certain internal qualities believed to distinguish them from other creatures. These explanations make sense within modern Western contexts shaped by psychology, philosophy, and individualism, and they give the doctrine an immediate sense of relevance for questions of dignity and ethics.
But is that actually how Genesis tells the story? Or are we reading the text through assumptions it never makes explicit?
When the creation narrative itself is allowed to answer that question, a different picture begins to emerge. The image of God is never defined by reference to inner human capacities. Genesis does not ground the image in intelligence, moral awareness, or self-reflection. Instead, it moves directly from the declaration that humanity is made in God’s image to a description of humanity’s role within creation.
This matters because internal capacities are not possessed equally by all humans. They vary across stages of life, differ widely among individuals, and can be diminished or altered without calling a person’s humanity into question.
That tension pushes the question back where it belongs: not to later theological reflection, but to Genesis itself. What does the creation narrative actually say about the image of God, and how would its earliest audiences have understood it?
That question leads directly into the wording of Genesis 1 itself. The creation of humanity is framed in language that is both familiar and strange, intimate yet expansive. Before Genesis tells us what humans are made to do, it locates their creation within a conversation that reaches beyond humanity altogether.
That framing comes into focus in Genesis 1:26.
The Plural Speech and the Singular Act
Genesis 1:26 introduces a grammatical tension that is easy to overlook but difficult to dismiss:
“Let us make humankind in our image.”
The verb is first-person plural. Yet when the act of creation itself is described in the following verse, the language shifts decisively back to the singular:
“So God created humankind in his image.”
This is not sloppy grammar. It is deliberate.
The Hebrew term elohim is grammatically plural but frequently takes a singular referent when used of Israel’s God. That much is widely recognized. What is distinctive in Genesis 1:26, however, is not the noun, but the form of the verb itself. The phrase translated “let us make” is נַעֲשֶׂה (naʿăśeh), a first-person plural cohortative verb. This verbal form is used to express intention or deliberation among more than one party. Notably, it appears without an explicit subject, inviting the reader to infer an audience is being addressed.
Some have suggested that this plural language reflects a so-called “royal we,” a convention in which a single ruler speaks of himself in the plural. However, this explanation does not fit the Hebrew evidence. As W. Randall Garr has shown, while Biblical Hebrew occasionally employs plural nouns to express majesty or intensity, it does not use first-person plural verbal forms in this way. There is no clear example in the Hebrew Bible of a solitary speaker using a cohortative verb like naʿăśeh to refer only to himself.1 If the author of Genesis had intended a singular speaker, standard grammatical options were readily available. The choice of a first-person plural cohortative is therefore best understood as intentional rather than ornamental.
This plural-to-singular pattern is not isolated. It appears again at key moments in the primeval history. In Genesis 3:22, following humanity’s grasp for moral autonomy, God says, “The human has become like one of us.” In Genesis 11:7, as humanity unites at Babel, God declares, “Let us go down and confuse their language.” In each case, plural deliberation precedes singular divine action.
Taken together, these passages suggest that Genesis is not presenting a solitary deity speaking into a vacuum, but a high God addressing a heavenly assembly. This aligns with what other biblical texts more explicitly describe as a divine council—other elohim who participate in God’s administration of the cosmos but do not rival His creative authority (e.g., Ps 82:1; Deut 32:8–9; 1 Kgs 22:19–23; Job 1:6; Ps 89:5–7).
While later Christian theology would articulate a Trinitarian understanding of God, Genesis 1:26 is not operating within that conceptual framework. Reading the Trinity into this passage introduces categories foreign to its historical and linguistic setting. In other words, Genesis 1:26 is not doing that particular theological work.
That said, this is not to suggest that the Old Testament lacks passages that point toward a more complex understanding of Yahweh’s identity. Other texts (e.g., Gen 19:24; Zech 2:8–11) offer clearer evidence of complexity within Yahweh’s self-presentation—particularly scenes in which Yahweh appears both as a transcendent, unseen ruler and as a visible figure who bears His name and exercises His authority.2 These passages raise questions of shared identity and divine agency in ways Genesis 1 does not.
Genesis is a book of Scripture, but it is also a text that existed long before there was a “Bible” as a collected canon. It emerged within a particular historical, linguistic, and cultural environment, and it speaks in ways familiar to that world. Ancient Near Eastern literature regularly depicts high deities addressing a council, using deliberative speech before decisive action. Genesis participates in that symbolic grammar while simultaneously reshaping it.
Crucially, the shift from plural speech to singular creation preserves a central theological claim: God alone creates. No other beings participate in the act itself. The council is present for deliberation, not execution.
This allows Genesis to affirm two realities at once. Israel’s God presides over a populated spiritual world, and He remains uniquely sovereign within it. Rather than flattening the text into later theological categories, this reading allows Genesis to speak from within its own ancient context—one that acknowledges other divine beings while reserving ultimate creative authority for the Creator alone.
Image as Vocation, Not Inner Capacity
If Genesis portrays God addressing a heavenly council but acting alone as Creator, the next question is unavoidable: what does it mean for humanity to be made “in our image”?
Much of the modern discussion assumes that the image of God refers to something located within the human person. On this reading, the image is tied to internal capacities associated with cognition, moral reasoning, or self-reflective consciousness. While these proposals differ in nuance, they share a common assumption: the image is something humans possess by virtue of certain abilities.
The difficulty is not simply that these explanations vary. It is that Genesis itself never points in this direction.
Instead of defining a set of inner human qualities, the text moves immediately from image language to function. Humanity is created, blessed, and then commissioned. The image is introduced not as a description of internal makeup, but as the basis for a role within the created order.
This emphasis fits naturally within the ancient Near Eastern world. The primary questions shaping these cultures were not abstract inquiries into inner states or psychological capacities, but questions of order, authority, and purpose. Kings, priests, and even cult statues were defined by the roles they played within a larger system, not by their internal properties.3
Within that framework, Genesis presents humanity as God’s appointed representative within creation. To be made in God’s image is to be entrusted with delegated authority—to rule, to cultivate, and to extend order into the world God has made. The image, in other words, is vocational before it is descriptive.
This helps explain several features of the biblical text that are otherwise difficult to account for. The image is never portrayed as partial, incremental, or unevenly distributed. Male and female bear it equally. Later texts continue to speak of humanity as God’s image even after rebellion, violence, and exile. The image persists not because human capability remains intact, but because the role itself has not been revoked.
Seen this way, the image of God names humanity’s calling rather than humanity’s competence. It identifies what humans are for, not what they are able to achieve. What is damaged by rebellion is not the image itself, but humanity’s faithfulness in carrying it out.
Image, Idolatry, and the Problem of Substitutes
If the image of God is best understood as a vocation rather than an inner attribute, it also informs how we read the second commandment.
Exodus 20:4–6 prohibits the making of “images” and “likenesses,” language that has often been taken to forbid any visual representation of God. In some circles, this has been extended to include paintings, drawings, or other artistic depictions. But read within its historical and theological context, the commandment addresses something far more specific.
In the ancient Near Eastern world, images were not neutral artworks. They were cultic objects. Statues and idols functioned as physical embodiments of divine presence, crafted so that a god could be localized, managed, and ritually activated. An image was not merely a reminder of a deity; it was understood to be that deity in material form once properly consecrated.4
Seen in its historical setting, the rationale of the commandment becomes clearer. Israel is not forbidden from creativity or visual expression. What is prohibited is the attempt to replace the living God with a manufactured substitute. The issue is not representation in general, but misrepresentation through reduction—compressing divine agency into an object that can be handled, controlled, or contained.
This becomes unmistakable in Exodus 32. The golden calf is not presented as a denial of God’s existence, but as an attempt to make God present in a familiar and manageable form. The problem is not that Israel wants a god, but that they want one they can see, carry, and control. The idol becomes a rival image, displacing humanity’s calling by relocating divine presence into an object.
In this light, the second commandment safeguards the dignity of the image rather than undermining it. God does not forbid images because He opposes representation. He forbids them because He has already chosen a better one.
The problem, of course, is that this chosen image does not remain faithful to its calling.
Christ as the True Image
If the image of God names a vocation humanity was created to fulfill, then a final question presses itself upon the text: what happens when that vocation fails?
Genesis answers almost immediately. Humanity is created to exercise God’s rule on earth but instead reaches for autonomy. The calling remains, but it becomes corrupted. Humans continue to bear the image, yet no longer carry it out faithfully. The problem is not the loss of the image, but the breakdown of faithful representation.
It is at this point that the New Testament’s language about Christ comes into view. Jesus is not described merely as an image of God, but as the image (Col. 1:15). Christ does not redefine the image by adding new attributes; He fulfills the role humanity was created to perform from the beginning.
Where Adam failed to exercise faithful dominion, Christ enacts it fully. Where humanity’s obedience fractured under the weight of autonomy, Christ embodies functional obedience. His life is vocationally complete. He does what humans were made to do: represent God’s reign rightly within creation.
In this sense, Christ is not a departure from Genesis, but its resolution. The image does not culminate in an object or an abstract quality, but in a life lived in alignment with God’s purposes. What was fractured in Adam is healed in Christ.
For that reason, the New Testament frames salvation in terms of renewal rather than replacement. Believers are not handed a different image, but are gradually formed into the one revealed in Christ. The goal is not to transcend humanity, but to have our humanity restored. The image is not discarded; it is finally brought to its intended end.
W. Randall Garr, In His Own Image and Likeness (Brill, 2003).
Michael S. Heiser, Two Powers in Heaven: The Unseen Realm in Second Temple Judaism (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020). Heiser argues that early Jewish texts preserved a distinction between an invisible Yahweh and a visible Yahweh figure who bears the divine name and authority—evidence of internal divine complexity without later Trinitarian formulation.
John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006). See this volume for a fuller discussion of role-based and functional understandings of identity in the ancient Near Eastern world, particularly as they relate to kingship, priesthood, and cultic representation.
Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, No Graven Image? Israelite Aniconism in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1995). See especially Mettinger’s discussion of cult images as ritually animated embodiments of divine presence rather than symbolic representations.