A phantom , i.e. (figuratively) illusion , resemblance ; hence, a representative figure , especially an idol
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Ṣelem means image or likeness — a representation that corresponds to and reflects an original. Its most theologically concentrated appearances are in Genesis 1:26-27 and 9:6, where it describes the human being as created in God's image (bəṣelem ʾĕlōhîm).
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Full entry for צֶלֶם (H6754) · Open the biblical lexicon
Ṣelem means image or likeness — a representation that corresponds to and reflects an original. Its most theologically concentrated appearances are in Genesis 1:26-27 and 9:6, where it describes the human being as created in God's image (bəṣelem ʾĕlōhîm).
The BSB source-word alignment has 17 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include images (3), and idols (2), idols (2), . . . (1), after his own image (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 1:26. Its strongest book concentrations include Genesis (5), 1 Samuel (3), Ezekiel (3), Psalms (2).
This entry includes 3 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
Ṣelem means image or likeness — a representation that corresponds to and reflects an original. Its most theologically concentrated appearances are in Genesis 1:26-27 and 9:6, where it describes the human being as created in God's image (bəṣelem ʾĕlōhîm). The word is also used for idols, for the shadow-image of human transience in the Psalms, and for the carved images of pagan gods.
Understanding what Genesis means by ṣelem requires attention to the ancient Near Eastern background: in the cultures surrounding Israel, a ṣelem was the representative statue of a king or god placed in a territory to signal sovereignty and presence. The king's image in a province declared whose reign extended there. When Genesis declares that God made humanity in his ṣelem, it is claiming that human beings — all of them, not only kings — are God's representative presence in the creation.
They are placed in the world to display who rules it. This reading does not require that the image is a quality humans possess (reason, morality, relationality) but that it is a role or function they occupy: to reflect God's character and represent his reign in the created order. The fall in Genesis 3 does not erase the image (Gen. 9. 6 still cites it as the ground of prohibiting murder), but it distorts the function.
The New Testament's account of Christ as the image of God (Col. 1. 15, Heb. 1. 3) and of believers being transformed into the same image (2 Cor. 3. 18) is the restoration of what the fall disrupted.
Ṣelem appears only 17 times in the Hebrew Bible, but its 5 appearances in Genesis 1:26-27 and 9:6 make it one of the most theologically load-bearing words in the canon. The remaining uses cover idols (Num.33.52), the divine throne imagery (Ps.17.15), and the transience of human existence (Ps.39.6). The concentration of theological use in Genesis and the sparseness elsewhere makes careful attention to those Genesis texts essential.
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
The triple repetition (created, image of God, created) is emphatic. The verse makes three claims at once: the act is God's (he created), the nature is representative (in his image), and the scope is complete (male and female — no human being is excluded from image-bearing). The image is not a quality of some humans but the status of all humans before the Creator.
Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed; for in His own image God has made mankind.
Post-flood, God grounds the prohibition of murder in the continued image-bearing of humanity. The fall has not removed the ṣelem. This is a crucial datum: even fallen, violent, sinful human beings retain the dignity of image-bearers, and attacking them is an offense against the God whose image they bear.
Surely every man goes about like a phantom; surely he bustles in vain; he heaps up riches not knowing who will haul them away.
Here ṣelem appears in a very different register: man walks as a ṣelem (shadow, phantom, image-figure) — transient, insubstantial, lacking the permanence of the original. The same word used for the dignity of image-bearing in Genesis describes the fragility of existence in the Psalms. Both are true: the image-bearer is real but not self-sustaining.
Like one waking from a dream, so You, O Lord, awaken and despise their form.
The ṣelem of the wicked is dismissed as a dream-image, an insubstantial appearance that God will dispose of at the moment of his arising. The contrast is between true existence grounded in God and the phantom existence of those who live without him.
You must drive out before you all the inhabitants of the land, destroy all their carved images and cast idols, and demolish all their high places.
Here ṣelem refers to the carved images of the Canaanite gods — precisely what the image-of-God human was not meant to become. The prohibition of idol-making in the Decalogue (Ex.20.4) uses a related word but the same conceptual category: do not make a ṣelem of any other god. The irony is that the very capacity for image-bearing that makes humans significant also makes them capable of directing that representative function toward false gods.
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Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Hebrew word. Representation bearing resemblance or shadow of reality; from phantom to idol, denoting visible embodiment or false substitute.
Representation bearing resemblance or shadow of reality; from phantom to idol, denoting visible embodiment or false substitute.
a phantom, i.e. (figuratively) illusion, resemblance; hence, a representative figure, especially an idol BDB: image Usage: image, vain shew.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
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Ṣelem forces the preacher and teacher to start with something the culture already knows but has lost: every human being in the room is a royal representative of God placed in the creation to display who rules it. The Genesis claim is not that humans are like God in some spiritual quality they can point to, but that they function as God's image — his presence and sovereignty displayed in a creature.
This has immediate and radical implications. Every person who has been disregarded, marginalized, or destroyed carries the ṣelem ʾĕlōhîm. The father who made his child in the back seat of a car, the person living under a bridge, the person in early-stage dementia who cannot recognize faces — all bear the image of God. Genesis 9:6 insists on this against the fall's distortions: murder is prohibited precisely because the victim is still an image-bearer.
The New Testament's account of Christ as the perfect image of God (Col. 1. 15) and of believers being transformed into that image (2 Cor. 3. 18, Rom. 8. 29) means that the restoration of what Genesis declares is already underway. The image distorted by the fall is being renewed in the image of the Son who perfectly represented the Father. This is the ground of all discipleship: not self-improvement but image-restoration, the Spirit conforming us to the one who perfectly bore the image we lost.
Gen.1.27
Ṣelem is cognate with the Akkadian ṣalmu (statue, image of a god or king). In the ancient Near East, setting up a ṣalmu of a god or king in a city or region declared sovereignty over that territory. The theological import for Genesis 1 is significant: humans as God's ṣelem are his royal representatives placed in the earth to display his sovereignty and represent his rule.
This functional interpretation does not require choosing between substantive views of the image (image as a quality) and relational views (image as orientation toward God) — it encompasses both as aspects of the representative function.
The New Testament's most concentrated development of ṣelem is in the Pauline corpus. Colossians 1:15 calls Christ 'the image (eikōn) of the invisible God' — the one who perfectly represents and displays the Father. 2 Corinthians 3:18 describes the Spirit's ongoing work of transforming believers into 'the same image from glory to glory.' Romans 8:29 names the final goal: conformity to the image of the Son.
The trajectory is clear: what Genesis declared (humans as image-bearers), the fall distorted, Christ as the true image restored, and the Spirit is currently renewing in those united to him. James 3:9's warning — we should not curse people 'who are made in the likeness of God' — applies the ṣelem logic to relational ethics. The image of God is never merely a spiritual concept in Scripture; it always has implications for how human beings are treated, spoken to, and regarded.
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