Imago Dei D (for Deuterocanonical)

The only places in the Old Testament where the ‘image of God’ explicitly shows up is in Genesis (although I have tried to show that it is implicitly present as a reason not to make forbidden ‘images’ in Exodus 20/Deuteronomy 5). I moved briefly into the New Testament with the passage about paying taxes to Caesar from Matthew 22, but before going more into the New Testament, and explicitly how it portrays Jesus as the ‘image of God,’ I wanted to back up briefly and look at some other material between the Old and New Testaments that makes reference to humans made in God’s image. It explicitly is mentioned in three places in the Deuterocanonical (or Apocryphal, depending on which tradition’s canon one accepts) books: Wisdom of Solomon 2.23; Sirach 17.3; 2 Esdras 8.44. Let’s see what these texts say about the ‘image of God’ in humans.

Wisdom 2.21-24: ‘Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray, for their wickedness blinded them, and they did not know the secret purposes of God, nor hoped for the wages of his holiness, nor discerned the prize for blameless souls; for God created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his company experience it.’

The Imago Dei here connotes immortality…that humans are marked to live for eternity. This passage also inseparably links Genesis 1 with Genesis 2 & 3 because the threat of death enters in Genesis 2 in terms of obedience/disobedience. Living in accordance or obedience to the will of God is the mark of one who is properly relating to God. God is eternal and by making us in his image, he says that although we have a beginning (unlike God), we are inviting to have no end (like God). (Aside: the last two phrases are peculiar…I am intrigued by the choice of the word ‘envy’ to describe the devil’s attitude. I recall my OT professor in seminary noting that the word for ‘naked’ in Gen. 2.25 to describe the humans is the same Hebrew word for ‘crafty’ in Gen. 3.1 to describe the serpent. Going back to the earlier parts of Gen. 2 brings about a ‘divine experiment’ of sorts trying to find a ‘suitable helper’ for the man...after realizing that ‘it is not good for man to be alone,’ God brings the animals to the man for them to be named and after realizing none of them were suitable, he ‘causes the man to go into a deep sleep’ and creates woman out of his side. Perhaps the serpent was ‘envious’ because it was not found ‘suitable’ and also may explain partly why the serpent tempted the woman first? Also, the notion of ‘belonging to his company’ has strategic bearing on how we understand redemption and atonement.)

Sirach 17.1-4: ‘The Lord created human beings out of earth, and makes them return to it again. He gave them a fixed number of days, but granted them authority over everything on the earth. He endowed them with strength like his own, and made them in his own image. He put the fear of them in all living beings, and gave them dominion over beasts and birds.’

The import here appears to be on that of ‘dominion’ or governance over creation, which is clearly part of the issue in Genesis, too. The interesting thing I find in this passage is that it seems that ‘death’ (in terms of bodily death) may have been part of the original intent even before humanity fell from obedience. I don’t think this is antithetical to what was said in Wisdom but it is another perspective that emphasizes how the ‘image of God’ is to be lived in especially in our current ordered realm.

2 Esdras 8.42-45: ‘I answered and said, “If I have found favor in your sight, let me speak. If the farmer’s seed does not come up, because it has not received your rain in due season, or if it has been ruined by too much rain, it perishes. But people, who have been formed by your hands and are called your own image because they are made like you, and for whose sake you have formed all things—have you also made them like the farmer’s seed? Surely not, O Lord above! But spare your people and have mercy on your inheritance, for you have mercy on your own creation.”’

Here the speaker is pleading to God, appealing to the fact that he created humanity in his own image as the basis for having mercy on sinful humans. The ‘image of God’ here also seems to carry with it the notion of ‘dominion’ in the reference ‘for whose sake you have formed all things’; at the very least it conveys the importance that humans are related to the rest of creation and our being made in God’s image has something significant to do with that.

I think these three passages (the first and last ones, in particular, with their acknowledgement of sin’s pervasiveness in humanity who has failed to properly image God) provide a good segue to where we’ll go next: Christ’s identity as the ‘image of God’ and his mission of restoring God’s image in humanity.