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Genesis 1: The Image of God

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

BIG IDEA: "Every single human is created in God's image, a status which comes with the vocation to rule the earth."

More commentary:

Context: this first story establishes that the creator God has an intention for creation, and that humanity has a particular (and dignified) role in that intention.

In the Enuma Elish, the creation story of ancient Israel's Babylonian neighbours, humans are created by the gods to be slaves - allowing the gods to rest from their laborious tasks.

"The image" is not primarily an attribute (e.g., some qualitative similarity to God), but rather a role. The statues or images of a king spread across his realm each have the role of being the king's image - representing and embodying the king's rule. In Egypt, the pharaoh was understood to have this status as the image of the gods. "My living image on earth," the gods called him (source)

In the Genesis 1 narrative, however, it's neither the case that humans are created to be slaves, nor that God would choose to be represented by a select elite. No, instead, all human beings (every single one, male and female), are created to rule the earth and its creatures together, almost as if we were all God's viceroys.

However, throughout human history, we've accepted the false concept that some humans are meant to rule, while others are meant to be ruled. This is the justification which underpins all class society (men and women, lords and serfs, slaveholder and slaves, rich and poor). But what if we believed that it is only just when all people are empowered to rule?

Application: what if we were to treat every human we meet as if we were all equally created in God's image? What if we saw them not as an object we can use or exploit to get what we want but rather a someone who carries God's face?

Does the Genesis 1 narrative lead to anthropocentrism or human supremacy? Do humans have the right to treat the rest of creation as our inferiors and our subjects, that is, to be used and exploited however we want? Or might ruling as God's images also mean representing the way God rules - with love and wisdom?

Genesis 18: Sodom and Gomorrah

Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”

The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

BIG IDEA: "God hears the outcry of those who have suffered from the apathy and abuses of our cities. God will respond, not with punishment, but justice."

More commentary:

“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen." (Ezekiel 16:49-50).

While Sodom has lent its name to anal sex (sodomy) and has come to be associated with homosexuality, it seems to be that Sodom's main issue was injustice: inhospitality to the angels disguised as strangers, a culture of rape, and an ability to stuff themselves without thinking twice about the needy.

Leviticus 25: Redemption

The year of sabbath rest

The Lord said to Moses at Mount Sinai, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter the land I am going to give you, the land itself must observe a sabbath to the Lord. For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. But in the seventh year the land is to have a year of sabbath rest, a sabbath to the Lord. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest. Whatever the land yields during the sabbath year will be food for you—for yourself, your male and female servants, and the hired worker and temporary resident who live among you, as well as for your livestock and the wild animals in your land. Whatever the land produces may be eaten. (NIV)

The jubilee

"In addition, you must count off seven Sabbath years, seven sets of seven years, adding up to forty-nine years in all. Then on the Day of Atonement in the fiftieth year, blow the ram’s horn loud and long throughout the land. Set this year apart as holy, a time to proclaim freedom throughout the land for all who live there. It will be a jubilee year for you, when each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors and return to your own clan. This fiftieth year will be a jubilee for you. During that year you must not plant your fields or store away any of the crops that grow on their own, and don’t gather the grapes from your unpruned vines. It will be a jubilee year for you, and you must keep it holy. But you may eat whatever the land produces on its own. In the Year of Jubilee each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors.

When you make an agreement with your neighbor to buy or sell property, you must not take advantage of each other." (NLT)

Redemption of the land

"The land must never be sold on a permanent basis, for the land belongs to me. You are only foreigners and tenant farmers working for me.

With every purchase of land you must grant the seller the right to buy it back. If one of your fellow Israelites falls into poverty and is forced to sell some family land, then a close relative should buy it back for him." (NLT)

A poor neighbour

"If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and are unable to support themselves among you, help them as you would a foreigner and stranger, so they can continue to live among you. Do not take interest or any profit from them, but fear your God, so that they may continue to live among you. You must not lend them money at interest or sell them food at a profit. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.

If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and sell themselves to you, do not make them work as slaves. They are to be treated as hired workers or temporary residents among you; they are to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. Then they and their children are to be released, and they will go back to their own clans and to the property of their ancestors. Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves. Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God." (NIV)

BIG IDEA: "None should be enslaved forever. Make it an institution to regularly provide rest, release, and relief for those at rock bottom."

More commentary:

Context: In the Book of Leviticus, God gives Moses a series of instructions and laws which will allow God and Israel to live closely with one another. In this chapter, God provides instructions on rituals of redemption, that is, clearing a debt. Holiness, for the God of Israel, also includes social justice.

This one chapter is so rich, it's worth pondering for a long time. If only we returned to these passages as much as we do the one passage about male-on-male anal penetration.

To me, this chapter countervails the "dominion mandate" of Genesis 1. Here, the land is not just a possession to exploit. The land is to be given a year of rest. It is given the chance to express its own abundance, to produce on its own rather than to be made to produce. For, we are told, the land is God's. We are stewards.

I love the repeated refrain at the end of these instructions, reminding the Israelites to fear the God who brought them out of Egypt. It's a strange sequitur, but it forcefully brings us to the conclusion: if we remember that we ourselves have been redeemed from slavery, how can we have the stomach to allow others to remain enslaved? It reminds me of Matthew 18:21-35 and the parable of the unforgiving debtor. We must always remember that God redeemed us first.

Amos 9

“Are not you Israelites the same to me as the Cushites?” declares the Lord. “Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt, the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?

“Surely the eyes of the Sovereign Lord are on the sinful kingdom. I will destroy it from the face of the earth."

BIG IDEA: Just as God performed an exodus liberation for Israel, God also delivered the Philistines and the Arameans. The heart of God is for the liberation of all.

More commentary:

It's hard to do better than Walter Brueggemann's commentary on this verse, which is also where I first encountered this theological dynamite.

Did the Philistines or the Arameans know the name of the Lord? Are we supposed to imagine that these nations once knew the God who saved them, but then turned towards other gods? Or, more provocatively, did God deliver them and make them into a people under an anonymous name - as an uncredited and unknown saviour? Anything we say about God's purposes being about his own glory and the reputation of his name must be tempered by this: God liberated two people groups who do not worship him. Is he okay with their gods taking the credit?

Wherever people are being liberated, there God may be also.

Application: what if we tried to see God working anonymously in every liberation movement, in every place where people are freed, not just in spaces identified as Christian? What if we acted as if God's liberating love extended also to our enemies as well as to those who worship other gods?

Psalm 82

God presides over heaven’s court; he pronounces judgment on the heavenly beings: “How long will you hand down unjust decisions by favoring the wicked?

“Give justice to the poor and the orphan; uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute. Rescue the poor and helpless; deliver them from the grasp of evil people.

But these oppressors know nothing; they are so ignorant! They wander about in darkness, while the whole world is shaken to the core.

I say, ‘You are gods; you are all children of the Most High. But you will die like mere mortals and fall like every other ruler.’”

Rise up, O God, and judge the earth, for all the nations belong to you.

BIG IDEA: God judges rulers (human or heavenly) based on whether they gave justice to the vulnerable and oppressed. God sides with the oppressed against oppressors.

More commentary:

Context: In the imagination of the Ancient Near East, it was often understood that human affairs and nations were governed by a divine council or assembly, itself presided over by a higher god among the gods. In this psalm, the psalmist imagines that the creator God, the God of Israel, presides over such an assembly over "elohim," or gods, or heavenly beings. (source)

Think of Deuteronomy 32:8-9, where God Most High divided up humanity into a number of nations corresponding with the number of the heavenly court (the sons of God). The implication is that each nation has been assigned an elohim, and God's alloted inheritance is the people Israel.

However, in Psalm 82, the psalm ends with all the nations coming into God's inheritance. God has judged the elohim unworthy of their inheritance. They will hand over the nations to God, who now assumes responsibility over all the earth.

Why this change in plans? God pronounces the charges: the gods of the nations have passed unjust decisions biased towards the wicked. The gods have failed to show concern for the poor, the oppressed, and the vulnerable. Instead, the gods have become "oppressors." God's solution is monotheism. For their crimes, the gods will die like mere mortals, their regime will fall like any empire.

For God, social justice is no small thing. You'll sometimes hear that "not everything is political," that there is more to the natural world and the outer cosmos than questions of social justice. But in Psalm 82, we learn that justice is literally cosmic in nature. The situation of every poor person, every orphan, every human living in helplessness is a matter discussed in the courts of heaven. And we learn this: even heavenly gods who perpetuate injustice end up making a pact with death. Justice has no exceptions.

And if God will judge the gods of the nations guilty for being oppressors, how do we think he will judge the oppressive human rulers of the nations?

justice in the bible