H6754

• {"n":"Genesis 1:26b","s":"In our image, after our likeness. Two nouns, and probably one idea.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-1-26b","r":"Genesis 1:26","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Every version reads image and likeness. Some older theological systems treat them as separate endowments, one lost at the fall and one retained."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"**Safe and sound.** **Null and void.** English pairs words that mean nearly the same thing all the time, and nobody hunts for the difference between null and void. Hebrew does the same, and readers hunt anyway."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Tselem is a physical representation, including a carved idol. Demut is a resemblance. In Genesis 5:3 the two are swapped around with the prepositions reversed, which is what makes a technical distinction hard to sustain. Read together they say one thing: humanity is God's representative image on the ground, the way a king's statue in a province represented the king."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English can print both nouns but cannot signal that the pair is a single idea, so readers naturally assume two."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When two near-synonyms appear together, check whether the writer ever swaps or reverses them. If he does, the distinction you are looking for is probably not there."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"There is no translation dispute. There is a long tradition of distinguishing the two, and the internal evidence at Genesis 5:3 is the argument against it."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05e6\u05b6\u05dc\u05b6\u05dd tselem \u00b7 H6754 \/ \u05d3\u05b0\u05bc\u05de\u05d5\u05bc\u05ea demut \u00b7 H1823"}],"src":["Genesis 5:3 reverses the prepositions and the order","tselem of an idol: 2 Kings 11:18; Amos 5:26","The royal-statue background is standard in ANE treatments; Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament"]}
• {"n":"Psalm 39:6","s":"Every man walketh in a vain shew. Betselem, in an image, the identical word as image of God at Genesis 1:27.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=psalm-39-6","r":"Psalm 39:6","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Most versions read vain shew, phantom, or shadow, all reasonable renderings of tselem's more common sense of image or likeness applied here to something insubstantial, but none can show the reader that this is the identical word from Genesis 1's creation account."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"Imagine a poem describing people as merely walking shadows, using the very word your culture reserves for the divine spark supposedly placed in every human being. That collision, exalted origin and shadowy transience sharing one word, is exactly what this verse may be doing in Hebrew."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Tselem is the same word rendered image at Genesis 1:26-27, humanity made betselem elohim, in the image of God. Here the psalmist says every man walks betselem, in an image, or, read more literally, as a mere image or shadow of himself, insubstantial and passing. Whether the psalmist intends a deliberate echo of Genesis or is simply using tselem's separate, attested sense of shadow or phantom is debated, but the shared vocabulary invites the connection: the very word for humanity's God-given dignity also names our fleeting insubstantiality."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English vain shew or phantom reads as ordinary, unremarkable vocabulary for transience; it carries no built-in echo of a creation account written many psalms earlier in the same collection, so the potential irony, exalted image-bearers reduced to mere images of themselves, is invisible without knowing both passages use the identical Hebrew word."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When a psalm uses vocabulary shared with Genesis's foundational statements about humanity, check whether the poet is drawing a deliberate, even ironic, contrast rather than simply reusing common religious language. Shared roots across very different genres are often doing real interpretive work."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Reading tselem here as unrelated to Genesis 1 treats it as simply the ordinary word for a fleeting shadow or phantom. Reading it as a deliberate echo turns the verse into a pointed reflection on human transience measured against human dignity, using the very word that named that dignity in the first place."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05e6\u05b6\u05dc\u05b6\u05dd tselem \u00b7 H6754"}],"src":["tselem as image of God: Genesis 1:26-27","tselem's separate attested sense of shadow\/phantom: standard Hebrew lexicons"]}