The Lᴏʀᴅ created humans.

Genesis 1.26-31.

Day six in the creation story of Genesis 1 started with God creating the land animals. After that, on the same day, he created humans. Then he gives us humans the planet he created, tells us—and the animals—we get the plants for food, and basically wraps up the whole of creation by recognizing the whole thing as ט֖וֹב מְאֹ֑ד/tov meöd, “good in abundance.” Or as the KJV put it, “very good,” but maybe very isn’t quite superlative enough. God considered it profoundly good. So that’s how I translated it.

Genesis 1.26-31 KWL

26God said, “We will make humanity in our image,

like our likeness.

They’ll have dominion over the sea’s fish,

over the heavens’ bird,

over the beast,

over all the land,

over every creeper creeping on the land.”

27God created humanity in his image;

he created it in God’s image;

he created them male and female.

28God blessed them.

God told them, “Bear fruit. Be many.

Fill the land and take it over.

Rule over the sea’s fish,

over the heavens’ bird,

over every life which creeps on the land.”

29God said, “Look, I give you

every seeding plant on the face of the land,

every tree, every seeding fruit in it.

It’s for food.

30To every life in the land,

to the heavens’ bird,

to everything creeping in the land

with a living soul in it,

every green plant is food.”

It was so.

31God saw everything he did.

Look, it was profoundly good.

It was dusk, then dawn.

Day six.

I remind you: The pagan myths had the gods shape the earth for themselves. Humans were kind of an afterthought: “Oh yeah, we’re gonna need slaves. Let’s make humans.” Their humans are then instructed to get to work on the gods’ behalf—and don’t annoy them, or the gods will plague them. Maybe kill them and send them to a really bad afterlife. But for loyal slaves, a really good afterlife—and then they got to work on the afterlife.

In Genesis God does no such thing. There’s nothing here about God ruling the earth. (Yes, there is stuff about that elsewhere in the bible. But not in this story.) In this creation story, God doesn’t make the earth for himself, but for us. He creates humans and tells us to run the place. It’s our planet. It’s our duty to sort it out and keep it functioning properly. Not his.

He doesn’t even warn us to run the planet properly, lest we suffer consequences. (And as we’ve seen in various environmental catastrophes, there are consequences. Neither does God threaten us with a bad afterlife if we muck things up—God doesn’t even make an afterlife.

Yeah, think about that. There is no afterlife in the ancient Hebrew creation stories. Because why would you need one? Sin and human death weren’t part of God’s ecosystem. (Plant death yes; animals and fungi gotta eat! Possibly some animal death too; God doesn’t address what sea creatures were meant to eat, and usually that’d be each other. Anyway.) Humans were meant to live forever—and still are. So why create an afterlife?

Whereas ancient pagan religions—especially the Egyptians!—were obsessed with the afterlife. Every single thing they did was for the sake of a good afterlife. Annoyingly, many Christians get the very same way about “heaven,” because they’ve fallen for our popular culture’s myths about dying and going to heaven—which aren’t at all consistent with what the New Testament teaches about resurrection and New Jerusalem.

Yeah, after we humans mucked up God’s profoundly good creation in Genesis 3, God had to create more stuff, like the afterlife. Which still isn’t really part of God’s ecosystem. It exists, but it’s purely temporary. Eventually God’s throwing it into the burning lake of sulfur. Rv 20.11 It’ll be gone.

“We.”

In verse 26, God says he’ll create a human, and here for the first time he refers to himself as “we,” and refers to “our image” and “our likeness.” We and our, meaning more than one person. Skeptical scholars will actually claim this story was swiped from a polytheistic pagan story, and the author of Genesis forgot to fix all the pronouns. But nope, that’s not what’s going on here.

The ancients believed God isn’t the only being in his throne room, as you can tell from Isaiah, Ezekiel, and John’s visions of heaven. He’s got a court; it’s full of angels and other mighty spirits. Most scholars assume God’s addressing this court. Some Christians do too—they figure God’s got an audience, and here’s where he addresses them. “Hey, let’s make humans who are sapient like us.”

More Christians think God’s addressing himself, and read the trinity into these pronouns. It’s like God the Son decided to tell God the Father, or God the Holy Spirit, “Hey, I want you in on this. Help me make Adam.” The Pharisees claimed God was, at this time, speaking to the Word of God—so yep, it’s the very same scenario, with the Father creating and the Son pitching in. Thing is, John says the Son created everything. Jn 1.3 So if the Pharisees are right, they have it backwards: The Son’s creating and the Father’s pitching in.

Trinity is the most popular Christian explanation. Many a Christian will claim the writer of Genesis somehow knew God’s a trinity. I’ve also heard someone claim this was a divinely inspired typo—the writer didn’t mean to say God is more than One, yet somehow “we” slipped into the text a few times, so we Christians could get some Old Testament evidence for the trinity. But I don’t think this explanation will win any fans among inerrantists.

My own guess—which is not a common one, but I once heard it before and thought it’s a really good one—is God was speaking to the land. In Genesis 2.7, God creates humans out of dirt. And you’ll recall in the previous verses, God commanded the land to spit up plants Ge 1.11 and animals, Ge 1.24 so here he’s still speaking to the land. Humanity is meant to resemble God’s divine image, and the earth’s material image. After all, we’re not pure spirit like God; nor are we pure animal like monkeys. We’re both—we’re spirits encased in meat. Apes whom God decided to make his children.

If either of these descriptions sounds horribly wrong to you, it’s because you’re used to thinking of humans as an entirely unique creature… instead of a bizarre hybrid between two different things. Not angels, not chimpanzees, but resembling both, and better. We’re matter and spirit. We’re a “missing link,” so to speak, between what God is, and what the rest of creation is. We contain both images.

And no, it’s not a bad thing. God became human too, remember? Jesus had no problem with the idea of being put into a body which sweats, farts, itches, aches, gets tired, gets random erections just before the teacher calls you to the front of the class; he gave up infinity to do it, because he loves us enough to join us at our level—and lift us up to his.

In Genesis 3 we also read about God hanging out in the garden, on earth, with his humans. We’re meant to get the sense this was always the plan. Maybe God always intended to become one of us and live among us. We think he only did it to save us from sin, but perhaps sin turned it from something purely voluntary on his part, into something more necessary.

In God’s image.

Historically, Christians and Christian theologians have really messed up the interpretation of צֶלֶם/chelém, “image,” and דְּמוּת/demút, “likeness.” Genesis 1 is written as Hebrew poetry, so these words are meant to be synonyms: They mean the very same thing as one another. Humans resemble God. But the theologians kept trying to claim “image” means one thing, and “likeness” means another, and every so often I hear a Christian who tries to teach how “image” is different from “likeness” when no they’re not.

As for what that resemblance is: Obviously it’s not a physical resemblance, since God didn’t yet have a body, no matter what Mormons claim. It’s a spiritual resemblance. We’re likewise sentient beings. We think, plan, create, love, and have free will. In every non-material way (except, of course, evil and our vastly lower power level) we’re just like God. Other animals might come close, but they weren’t made in his image. Humans were.

And you’ll note both male and female, equally, are made in God’s image. Our spiritual characteristics, and God’s, have nothing to do with gender. Gender only has to do with how we resemble earth, and the other creatures of our world. Obviously we procreate like the animals. But unlike the animals, we’re also meant to procreate like God does, and adopt people into our families, our nations, our churches; to appropriately share our lives with one another, and love one another as God loves us.

Lastly, food. Humans gotta eat! So we’re allowed to eat all the plants. Since some plants are poisonous, various Christians wonder whether God didn’t change some of those plants into poisonous ones, or create new poisonous plants, after we humans sinned. And I remind you once again: Genesis is not a science book. Its intent was to tell us God created the world for us. Pagans were taught there were special sacred trees, or sacred plants, which only the gods could touch. But no, there aren’t; every tree was created for us, and no tree is off-limits.

Well… except the one, but that’s in chapter 2. It’s not part of this creation story; it’s part of the next one.