Genesis 5: A Son in His Own Likeness

"This is the book of the generation of Adam. When God created man he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them and blessed them and named them Adam when they were created. When Adam had lived a hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth."

It's interesting to me that it is Adam who names Seth. Eve had named Cain, their first son. The impression I get from this passage is that Seth is very much his father's boy, and the apple of his eye " he became the father of a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named his Seth." Seth is the "spittin' image" of his papa.

All this throws a new light on what it means for Adam to be in the likeness and image of God. This passage wants us to think again about what it means that Adam was in the image and likeness of God.

In past centuries, the idea of the "image of God" has had to carry around with it all sorts of ideological freight. We are "in the image of God" when we love. No, other scholars have said in my hearing, we are in the image of God when we create. But I prefer the simpler explanation of one scholar who says that Adam looked like God. That's it. Adam looked a lot like God, just as Seth looked a lot like Adam.

First, the use of the words "image" and "likeness" refer to statues, idols, pictures. God created a walking, talking, breathing statue of himself when he created Adam. What a slap in the face this would be to all idolatry. Later, the Israelites, in imitation of their neighbors, would make idols of silver and gold. But these pale in comparison to the "real" statue that God has made in Adam. In others words we are the real deal, not those gold and silver statuettes that can't move or talk or breathe. Idols are beneath our dignity to create. Put it another way, wouldn't the reader of Genesis conclude something like: We are what is beautiful, what God delights in, not those pieces of scrap metal.

But there is something more that this passage in Genesis 5 suggests to me and that is that just as Seth was the his daddy's boy, the apple of Adam's eye, so we are to conclude that Adam was his daddy's boy, the apple of God's eye, as we read in Luke 3:37, "Adam, the son of God."

To call someone "son"---that alone carries heavy connotations in the Bible. "Son" means beloved so many times in the Bible. Witness David mourning for Absolom, " O my son! Absolom! My son, my son!" Who can hear these words and not be moved by such a loss and such a love.