Genesis 1:26-27

Then God said….

These 3 words teach us that there’s an order and a timing to everything God does.

Why do you think it’s important to know and wait for God’s timing and order; and how have you seen that in operation in your own life – either negative or positive?

How do we know if it’s God’s timing for something in our lives?

Elohim said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.

וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, נַעֲשֶׂה אָדָם בְּצַלְמֵנוּ כִּדְמוּתֵנוּ

I used to think that Elohim was a synonym for God. This is what we’re taught today, but this was not the mind of the ancient Israelites who wrote the Scriptures.

I used to think that Elohim proved the complexity of God, even though scripture also teaches that He is One! (Deut. 6:4)

The challenge to this thought comes because of the word Elohim…

ים  (the letters yud and mem – pronounced eem) on the end of any Hebrew word makes it a plurality.

נוּ (the letters nun and vav – pronounced new) on the end of a word denotes “belonging to us.”

I used to base my supposition about Elohim being God on the fact that throughout the Scriptures God reveals different aspects of Himself to different people to teach us different things about His character.  Ultimately, He wants us to remember that He is one being though; with an infinite number of character traits. Even though God is a plurality, Scripture teaches that He is also One God.

I used to think that Elohim referred to God as a plurality, but lately the Lord has been exposing me to some other streams of thought about this.

Dr. Michael Heiser, a biblical scholar and Hebrew language expert says Elohim couldn’t be referring to God based on Psalm 82. He believes that Elohim refers to a divine council. This is a mind bending and paradigm shifting concept. Welcome down the rabbit hole with me. Let’s be open to the Holy Spirit’s leading, guidance and teaching about all of this. Thankfully, He leads us into all truth.

Psalm 82 calls the council ( עֲדַת־אֵל , adath-el) and describes gods under the authority of Israel’s God.

“God (אֱלֹהִים , elohim) stands in the council of El/the divine council (עֲדַת־אֵל , adath-el); among the gods (אֱלֹהִים , elohim) he passes judgment.”

The second occurrence of אֱלֹהִים (elohim) must be semantically plural due to the preposition “in the midst of.”

Dr. Heiser goes on to state that Elohim does not refer to the Trinity—because Psalm 82 describes how Israel’s God accuses the other אֱלֹֹהִים (elohim) of corruption and sentences them to die “like humankind.” God the Father would never accuse, sentence and condemn God the Son, or the Holy Spirit.

Here’s what we do know about the elohim from the Hebrew Bible. They share a certain characteristic: they all inhabit the non-human realm. By nature, elohim are not part of the world of humankind, the world of ordinary embodiment. Dr. Heiser believes that Elohim—as a term—indicates residence, not a set of attributes; it identifies the proper domain of the entity it describes.

Scripture teaches that the inhabitants of the spirit world include Yahweh, the lesser gods of His council, angels, demons, and the disembodied dead. They may cross over into the human world—as the Bible informs us—and certain humans may be transported to the non-human realm (e.g., prophets; Enoch). But the proper domains of each are two separate and distinct places.

Within the spiritual world, as in the human world, entities are differentiated by rank and power. Yahweh is an elohim, but no other elohim is Yahweh. This is what an orthodox Israelite believed about Yahweh. He was not one among equals; He was unique. The belief that Yahweh is utterly and eternally unique—that there is none like Him—is not contradicted by plural elohim in the OT.

Yes God is the word used when Elohim is translated in the Old Testament.  But as already stated Elohim is a plural therefore Elohim is not a synonym for God. We reserve the English “g-o-d” for the God of Israel and His attributes.

Despite their usage of elohim, the biblical writers do not qualitatively equate Yahweh with demons, angels, the human disembodied dead, the gods of the nations, or Yahweh’s own council members. Yahweh is unique and above these entities—yet the same term can be used to refer to all of them.

Is your mind being stretched yet?  Mine certainly has been as the Lord has exposed me to this teaching.

OK, Back to Genesis 1:26-27

וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, נַעֲשֶׂה אָדָם בְּצַלְמֵנוּ כִּדְמוּתֵנוּ

In these six words we could get an insightful look into God’s divine council. Adam was not only a personal name, but it also refers to humankind. If God really does have a divine council there must be different beings with different strengths, perspectives and purposes. This one sentence could be prophetically seeing the variety of people that would come from Adam and Eve to populate the planet and demonstrate the various gifts and callings of each.

Dr. Heiser believes that there is solid evidence in the Hebrew Bible for a three-tiered council. In the divine council of Israelite religion, Yahweh was the supreme authority over a divine bureaucracy that included a second tier of lesser אֱלֹהִים (elohim), also called the “sons of God” (בְנֵיֹאֵלִים , beney elim, בְנֵיֹהָאֱלֹהִים , beney ha’elohim, or בְנֵיֹאֱלֹהִים , beney elohim) or “sons of the Most High” (בְנֵיֹעֶלְיוֹן , beney elyon). It may be significant that these “sons of God” are never clearly referred to as angels (מַלְאָכִים , mal’akhim) in the Hebrew Bible, as that word denoted the lowest tier of the Canaanite council, and thus a third tier in the Israelite version.

We cannot limit God, nor should we try to make God into our image, thinking we understand everything there is to know about Him or the way He created and runs the world.

While our understanding of Him and His ways is very much a mystery there are some things we do know.  We do know that we are created in His image.  We are varied and complex; with great responsibility and power given to us, as we’ll see in the next part of verse 26:

And Elohim said: ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion…

They will rule….

In Genesis 1:26 God, or God’s divine council (I’m not going to claim that I completely understand this) declared that mankind would rule the fish, the birds, the livestock and all the creatures that crawl on the earth.

One thing I do understand though is that in God’s wisdom and love for us He created us to be masters of His creation.

In verse 27 Scripture reiterates that man is created in Elohim’s image; and that He created us in the image of Elohim; male and female. In God’s divine council are there males and females?  That’s really what Scripture teaches here.

I think that God put this in the Word to make sure that we all knew that each of us carries an aspect of divinity that is no less important than the other, irregardless of our sex.  In too many cultures in this world the men are seen as the rulers, while women are seen from more of a servant perspective.

Scripture is clear here that we are equals.  Unique with different roles and functions, but both as representations in this earthly realm of some type of spiritual being that exists in heavenly realms.  We are rulers who have been tasked with taking dominion. We’re only able to walk in our divinely destined roles as we submit our lives to Yeshua and learn what it means to truly be an Ambassador of God’s Kingdom. We learn this by studying God’s Word and we put it into practice as we apply the things we learn to our lives.

What areas in your own life have you submitted to God’s rulership?

What areas in your life have you not submitted to God’s rulership?

What does being created in Elohim’s image, as a ruler, teach you about what God expects from you in the time He’s allotted you on this earth?