אָדָם

אָדָם (ʾāḏām) is the common Hebrew noun for a human being or humanity. It may speak of the human creature as a class, a particular person, or people collectively. The same Hebrew spelling also stands behind the personal name Adam, but the governed Strong's system distinguishes the common noun H120 from the proper-name entry H121 in many passages. A responsible word study must therefore attend to article, syntax, discourse, and the indexed identity rather than treating every English “man” or “Adam” as the same lexical use.

Genesis 1:26 places humanity within God's creative purpose: humankind is made in God's image and commissioned to exercise creaturely rule under Him. Genesis 5:2 makes the collective reach explicit by saying that God created male and female, blessed them, and called them “man.” The noun in these passages includes humanity rather than identifying males alone. Image-bearing gives human life a dignity received from the Creator, while the surrounding commands give that dignity a vocation. The text does not make worth depend on strength, age, intelligence, social status, ethnicity, or usefulness.

Genesis 2:7 brings creatureliness into the same account. The Lord forms the human from the dust of the ground and gives the breath of life, so the human becomes a living being. Genesis 9:6 later appeals to God's image when prohibiting bloodshed. Human beings are neither self-created spirits nor disposable matter. Scripture holds together embodied dependence, accountable vocation, mortality, and God-given worth. The verbal relationship often noticed between ʾāḏām and ʾăḏāmâ, “ground,” is especially meaningful in Genesis 2 and 3, but it should not be turned into a universal definition detached from those narratives.

The Psalms place the human creature beneath God's majesty yet within His mindful care, and Psalm 90 remembers humanity's return to dust. Micah 6:8 addresses the human listener with a summons to justice, mercy, and humble walking before God. The New Testament's contrast between Adam and Christ in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 is a canonical development grounded in Genesis, not evidence that every H120 occurrence is a direct prediction of Christ. Christian anthropology therefore receives the whole witness: humanity created in God's image, fallen and mortal in Adam, accountable before the Creator, and renewed only through the saving work and resurrection life of Jesus Christ.

H120 identifies humanity collectively and human creatures within creation, mortality, worship, violence, and moral responsibility. Its selected uses show image-bearing dignity, formed dependence, male-and-female inclusion, protection of human life, smallness before divine majesty, return to dust, and accountable conduct before God.