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I have been blessed over the past several months to have experienced the psalms as they were intended to be consumed, as songs! A little while back, I wrote an article promoting The Psalms Project, which is a project headed by Shane Heilman in which he teams up with other music artists in an undertaking to set all 150 Psalms to contemporary music. However, Shane isn’t the only one making the Psalms musical again. In the age of AI, I have found some pretty awesome sounding metal versions of Psalms 71, 91, and 115. This is spiritually edifying in two ways; (1) the psalms resonate in a different way when sung or heard sung than if just read, as anyone who’s just read song lyrics of any kind can testify. ^[1]Am I old if I remember taking out the papers that came with CDs and just remember reading the song lyrics aloud in normal verbal speech?. And (2) When you listen to songs over and over again, you begin to memorize the lyrics. Whether it be from The Psalms Project or AI, I am starting to have large portions of the Psalms committed to memory! ^[2]And yes, they are accurate as to what you find in the text. When I first started listening to these psalms, I had my Bible app open to see how true they stayed to the biblical text. In the case of … Continue reading.

One of the psalms I love listening to is Psalm 115. This is one of the AI-generated versions produced by an artist called “He Leadeth Us”. In listening to it over and over, I have come to some thoughts about the Psalm as a whole and how it connects to concepts such as The Imago Dei, Genesis 1 and is cosmic temple motifs, and what it really means to image God, and how imaging God relates to that thorny verse that says “the dead praise not the Lord”, a common proof text of Soul Sleepists and Christian Physicalists, but which flies in the face of passages that teach there is an immediate consious Heaven prior to the resurrection of the body. My conclusion here is that the original human author’s intent is likely that he did not think there was an immediate disembodied afterlife, and that the surface reading is likely correct. Nevertheless, The Holy Spirit wanted this in the the book of Psalms because it is true, in a sense, in which the dead do not praise God in the way that they were created to do.

Genesis 1 – The Image Of God (Part 1: An Image Is Something You See)

Genesis 1:26-27 says, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (ESV)

First, what does it mean to say that humans are made in the image of God? There are a handful of options, but my view is what is sometimes called “The Representative View”. This view states that human beings are visual representations of God. In my previous writings on Genesis, I have often linked this to The Cosmic Temple interpretation of Genesis 1 in which humans are essentially the “idols” of Yahweh in His temple (i.e the universe), and that this is one of the many ways the biblical authors showed Yahweh’s supremacy to the pagan gods who vied for Israel’s affection. While the pagan gods needed humans to make their temples for them, and to make the images of themselves for them, Yahweh created His own temple and created His own images. While the images of pagan gods are lifeless, the images of Yahweh are alive and active! The living God has living images!

As Psalm 115 puts it
“Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
  They have mouths, but do not speak;
eyes, but do not see.
  They have ears, but do not hear;
noses, but do not smell.
  They have hands, but do not feel;
feet, but do not walk;
and they do not make a sound in their throat.” (verses 4-7, ESV)

It would be unwieldy to do an exhaustive survey of the various interpretations of The Image Of God here, but allow me to give two positive reasons in support of The Representative View followed by some responses to objections to it. First, even apart from a cosmic temple reading of Genesis 1, it seems to me that we ought to view humans as visual representations of God. For the Hebrew word for “image” is selem. And it always refers to a visual depiction of something, or something within one’s field of vision. As The Theological Wordbook Of The Old Testament says “Used sixteen times. The Aramaic is used similarly in Dan 2 and 3. The word basically refers to a representation, a likeness. Five times it is used of man as created in the image of God. Twice it is used of the golden copies of the mice and swellings that afflicted the Philistines (I Sam 6:5, 11 and see ʿōpel). Mostly it refers to an idol.” ^[3]R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke, eds., Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 767. In Ezekiel 16:17, the word “selem” is used to refer to an idol. Speaking to idolatrous Israel, God says “You also took your beautiful jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself images (selem) of men, and with them played the whore.” (ESV) An image is something you can see. The idea that the Image of God consists exclusively in cognitive faculties doesn’t seem plausible. You cannot see a person’s rational faculties, free will, his knowledge of moral right and wrong, etc. These things are mental products that aren’t observable with the naked eye. Perhaps such faculties are captured in the idea that humans are made in the likeness (Hebrew: demut) of God, but certainly not in the image (selem) of God.

An objection to the Representative View is that God is immaterial (e.g John 4:24), that barring the incarnation of the second person of The Trinity (John 1:1-3, 14, Philippians 2:5-8), He doesn’t have a physical form in His divine essence, but transcends the vast universe altogether (1 Kings 8:27). This is not a good objection, for humans don’t have to look like the divine nature (which isn’t physical) to be a visual representation of the divine. After all, many Christians think that demons are immaterial, and yet idols are visual representations of the demons that pagans worship (see Deuteronomy 32:17, Psalm 106:37, and 1 Corinthians 10:20. Cf. Psalm 82). Does the spiritual entity who goes by “Dagon” really have fish features? ^[4]This is assuming, of course, that he was a sea god, and thus, would undoubtedly have had nautical features as we see in modern depictions of Dagon. I am assuming he was a god of the sea and matched … Continue reading Does Baal literally have bull-like features? Are we supposed to think that the spiritual entity behind Ishtar was a literal naked woman with wings? These are all very physical depictions of these gods and goddesses and yet few of us think that the entities behind them actually looked like this, because like God, they are elohim (i.e, inhabitants of the unseen realm). ^[5]For a discussion of the term “Elohim” and how it isn’t a description solely used for the God of Israel, see my essay “Genesis 10-11: The Tower Of Babel, The Fall Of The gods, … Continue reading ^[6]On the other hand, I am open to the idea that the gods of the nations (which would be understood in modern Evangelical parlance as fallen angels), as being physical embodied beings. I remember a very … Continue reading. Moreover, Colossians 1:15-17 says that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (ESV). Jesus is even more of a representative as we are for the obvious reason that He is the second person of The Trinity made flesh. But nevertheless, did the body of Jesus of Nazareth look like the Logos prior to assuming a human nature? Certainly not! God The Son did not look like a 30-year-old Jewish guy from eternity past! And so, in conclusion, the incorporeality of God cannot be used as a legitimate objection to The Representative View.

Another objection to the Representative View of imago dei ^[7]Latin for “Image Of God” is one I encountered very recently in Dr. William Lane Craig’s book “In Quest Of The Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration”. While I agree with Dr. Craig’s overall thesis that the genre of Genesis 1-11 is “Mytho-History” (see the link in the prior sentence for my review of his book), I neither agree with every piece in his cumulative case for the genre identification, nor do I agree with everything in his theological anthropology, and this is one of those areas. Dr. William Lane Craig writes “…when the ANE texts speak of an idol or of the pharaoh as a god’s image, what they mean is that the idol or the pharaoh embodies or incarnates the god. The deity is present in and lives through the idol or the king. The problem is, this is not a functional interpretation. It is a metaphysical view of the relation between the idol or king and the god. It is more accurate, therefore, to call it an incarnational interpretation. The king is the incarnation of the god; the idol is the embodiment of the god. But then this interpretation is irrelevant for the interpretation of the Genesis texts, for those texts do not think of human beings as incarnations of God, through which he lives and acts in the world. An anti-iconic religion like Judaism would have recoiled at the idea that human beings are embodiments of God.” ^[8]William Lane Craig, In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2021), 369.

I think Dr. Craig is simply guilty of the fallacy of the overextended metaphor. While it is true that idols and deified humans like the Egyptian Pharoahs were said to be the physical vessels for the deities, ^[9]See also John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and The Old Testament, first edition, page 118, Baker Academic, 2006, and we certainly don’t want to say that we’re all God incarnate, this is simply where the analogy or metaphor breaks down. Dr. Craig’s criticism is no more legitimate than if he were to point out that Yahweh’s images are walking talking biological mammals while the idols are made of wood, stone, gold, and other materials, and are lifeless. In fact, it is the differences that make the difference. The fact that we are living images of the living God is one of ways in which Yahweh shows His superiority over Baal, Dagon, Ishtar, and his other rivals. Or it would be like pointing out that temples are buildings of wood or stone while the cosmos isn’t, therefore the Cosmic Temple view of Genesis 1 (which I’ll talk about more below) cannot be true. Dr. Craig is simply nitpicking at the differences. Moreover, I think the biblical concept of Imago Dei is doing more than paralleling the concept of graven images in the Ancient Near East. It is indeed doing that, but there is an additional facet of Imago Dei, and that is that it is linked to God’s Fatherhood. In Genesis 5:3, we read “When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.” (ESV) The same Hebrew words image (selem) and likeness (demut). Seth is one of Adam and Eve’s sons. He came along after Cain killed Abel in Genesis 4. The same language is used of God making gendered humankind in His own image and likeness in Genesis 1:26-27. If anyone ever sees a picture of my Dad when he was in his 30s, you will likely think he looks like me. And I have seen a picture of my mother when she was around my sister’s age, and boy do they have strong resemblances! In fact, even cross-gendered, this can happen. My cousin Lauren has a son named Jameson. I once picked up a photograph of Lauren at two years old, and I accidentally mistook it for a recent photo of her son! I kid you not! So, with the Imago Dei, we have (1) Humans being the images in God’s cosmic temple, the temple of which He took 7 days to create, and (2) As immediate descendents so often do, we “look like” our Heavenly Father. The idea of being children of God is not just a New Testament concept (John 1:12, Galatians 4:1-6), but was clearly God’s intention right from the very beginning! Adam was Yahweh’s son, and Eve was Yahweh’s daughter.

Aside from the positive reasons for accepting The Representative interpretation of Imago Dei, there are problems inherent to what Dr. Craig calls “The Substantialist Interpretation” of the Imago Dei. I do think that cognitive faculties such as rationality, free will, and a moral compass are all necessary prerequisites to imaging God in a verb sense. I do not think that lower animals could represent God very well because they either don’t have these faculties, or they have them only in very limited degrees. Nevertheless, the Image Of God is not merely something we do, it is fundamentally something we are. It is where our human rights come from. It is why human life is sacred (see Genesis 9:6 where God cites the Imago Dei as the rationale for capital punishment for murdering humans).

In his book “The Unseen Realm”, the late biblical scholar Michael Heiser wrote “The problem with defining the image by any of these qualities is that, on one hand, nonhuman beings like animals possess some of these abilities, although not to the same extent as humans. If one animal anywhere, at any time, learned anything contrary to instinct, or communicated intelligently (to us or within species), or displayed an emotional response (again to us or other creatures), those items must be ruled out as image bearing.” ^[10]Heiser, Michael S.. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (p. 41). Lexham Press. Kindle Edition. He went on to say “The pro-life position is based on the proposition that human life (and so, personhood) begins at conception (the point when the female egg is fertilized by the male sperm). The simple-celled zygote inside the woman’s womb, which pro-lifers believe to be a human person, is not self-aware; it has no intelligence, rational thought processes, or emotions; it cannot speak or communicate; it cannot commune with God or pray; and it cannot exercise its will or respond to the conscience. If you want to argue that those things are there potentially, then that means that you have only a potential person. That’s actually the pro-choice position. Potential personhood is not actual personhood. This thought process would mean that abortion is not killing until personhood is achieved, which nearly all pro-choicers would certainly consider to be after birth.” ^[11]Heiser, Michael S.. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (pp. 41-42). Lexham Press. Kindle Edition. And it isn’t just developing fetuses which we would have to deem as not bearing God’s image, but people in comas, or people who have had lobotomies, would also somehow lose the imago dei. Reducing Imago Dei to the posession (never mind active use) of certain mental properties opens the door to dehumanizing those who either don’t yet have, or have lost those mental properties. I am pro-life, and I know Dr. Craig is as well. Unless one wants to concede the debate to the pro-choice crowd, one should abandon a purely substantialist approach to what The Image Of God is.

Finally, one objection I can anticipate would be the image bearing property of deceased Yahwhists. ^[12]This is my catch all term for people faithful to Yahweh both before and after the cross. It would be anachronistic to call Old Testament figures like Abraham or Moses “Christians”, for … Continue reading Do people who die and go to Heaven cease to be God’s images? One possible response would be to say “Yes, they do.” This could be one reason why, as I’ll (kind of) argue later in this essay, death is such a terrible thing. God’s images are literally destroyed! And thus, bodily resurrection is needed for humans to reclaim Imago Dei! On the other hand, perhaps we needn’t be so hasty. The Imago Dei need not necessarily be reduced to these physical bodies we inhabit. The Representative Interpretation of The Imago Dei simply says that we are visual representations of God. So long as we can still somehow see each other in the intermediate state, the image need not be said to be lost in between death and resurrection. Of course, a disembodied state is far beyond anything we’re familiar with. ^[13]Unless you’re one of the few people who have experienced a Near Death Experience. I know that the topic of NDEs is controversial even among Christians, but I am convinced by the data that we … Continue reading. In fact, I remember my dad asking me how we’d be able to recognize each other in Heaven. Whether we’d see each other as “puffs of smoke” or whether we’d appear as we did in life. We just don’t know. Whichever explanation we go with, I don’t think The Representative Interpretation of Imago Dei is untenable.

In conclusion, the image of God is something you can see. We are visual representations of God. This doesn’t require a commitment to The Cosmic Temple Inauguration interpretation held by such biblical scholars as John Walton, J. Richard Middleton, Ben Stanhope, and Carmen Imes. But as we’ll see in the next subheader, it is more at home on such an interpretation.

Genesis 1 – Image Of God (Part 2: A Brief Defense Of The Cosmic Temple Interpretation).

The Cosmic Temple Inauguration view of Genesis 1 is a view that, in combination with The Framework Hypothesis, I take to be the correct way of looking at the creation account. Genesis 1 is a literary masterpiece that accomplishes many things in the span of a single page. It is the dark matter of The Bible; very small, but insanely dense in theological richness! The Temple Inauguration aspect is but one facet of this beautiful multi-faceted diamond. But what reasons are there for taking this passage as being about God inaugurating the universe to be His temple?

Reason 1: The Sacred Connotation Of The Number 7 In The Bible.

In his book “The Lost World Of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and The Origins Debate”, Old Testament scholar John H. Walton writes “First in line is the curious fact that the number seven appears so pervasively in temple accounts in the ancient world and in the Bible. Thus the seven days of the Genesis account of origins has a familiarity that can hardly be coincidental and tells us something about the seven-day structure in Genesis 1 that we did not know before and that is not transparent to modern readers. That is, if Genesis 1 is a temple text, the seven days may be understood in relation to some aspect of temple inauguration.” ^[14]Walton, John H.. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (p. 87). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

We see the number 7 occurring in places denoting sacredness generally, but especially in regards to The Tabernacle and The Jerusalem Temple.

*The construction of the tabernacle was completed in 7 stages (Exodus 40:19-32).

*The ordination of a priest was 7 days (Leviticus 8:33-35).

*Solomon’s temple was constructed in 7 years (1 Kings 6:38)

*Dedicated to God during a 7 day festival on the seventh month (1 Kings 8:2, 65) 

*Even Solomon’s dedication speech was given in 7 petitions (1 Kings 8:31-35).

But it’s even more interesting than this! As biblical scholar Ben Stanhope writes “Most Bible readers are aware that the Old Testament frequently uses the number seven as a symbol for completion and sacred order. However, you may not have noticed before that Genesis 1 has the number seven woven into the structure of creation through literary patterns beyond just its divisions of days. Many important words and phrases in Genesis 1 repetitively turn up in sequences of seven when counted up in the original Hebrew. Jeff Morrow at Seton Hall University summarizes these patterns that have long been marveled at by biblical scholars:[306] In Hebrew, Gen 1:1 contains seven words; 1:2 has fourteen words (2×7), and “God” occurs thirty-five times (5×7) in the seven-day account. The term “earth” occurs twenty-one times (3×7); “heavens/firmament” twenty-one times (3×7); the phrase “and it was so” appears seven times, as well as the phrase, “God saw it was good.” The important words “light” and “day” are found seven times in the first natural paragraph, and there are seven references to light in the fourth paragraph. In the section dealing with the creation of animals, the Hebrew word for “living beings” occurs seven times. In the seventh paragraph, which deals with the seventh day, there occur three consecutive sentences that each contains seven words and the phrase “seventh day” in the center. Moreover, the Hebrew words in the seventh paragraph total thirty-five (5×7).” ^[15]Stanhope, Ben. (Mis)interpreting Genesis: How the Creation Museum Misunderstands the Ancient Near Eastern Context of the Bible (pp. 137-138). Scarab Press. Kindle Edition. ^[16]See also See Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15. Word Biblical Commentary Vol. 1 (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1987), 7.

In light of all of this, which barely even begins to scratch the surface of the sacred significance of the number 7, it doesn’t seem likely that the author of Genesis said that God created the world in 7 days just simply because it just so happened to take Him that long. The number 7 is likely used as a literary device to support the sacredness of the universe, and this fact would not have been lost on an Ancient Near Eastern Israelite.

2: The Ancient Near Eastern Creation Texts Closely Link Temple Creation and Temple Building.

As J. Richard Middleton explains, “The notion of the cosmos as temple has its roots in the ancient Near Eastern worldview, in which temples were commonly understood as the royal palaces of the gods, in which they dwelled and from which they reigned. Furthermore, creation, followed by temple building and then divine rest, is a central theme in Mesopotamian, and perhaps Ugaritic, mythology (both Marduk and Baal have temples built for them after their conquest of the chaos monster).” ^[17]Middleton, J. Richard. The Liberating Image (p. 81). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

We should observe that two ANE gods in two creation narratives — The Gudea Cylinder (2125 BC) and Ugaritic Texts (KTU 1:4:VII 16-40) respectively — end their work of creating with the establishment of temples, thus lending corroborative evidence from the cultural cognitive environment to support the proposal that this is what is going on in Genesis as well.

Other Ancient Near Eastern Creation Texts strongly hint at the same. 

The Temple Hymn Of Kes:

” House …… inspiring great awe, called with a mighty name by An; house …… whose fate is grandly determined by the Great Mountain Enlil! House of the Anuna gods possessing great power, which gives wisdom to the people; house, reposeful dwelling of the great gods! House, which was planned together with the plans of heaven and earth, …… with the pure divine powers; house which underpins the Land and supports the shrines! House, mountain of abundance which passes the days in glory; house of Ninhursaja which establishes the life of the Land! House, great hillside worthy of the purification rites, altering (?) all things; house without whom no decisions are made! House, good …… carrying in its hands the broad Land; house which gives birth to countless peoples, seed which has sprouts! House which gives birth to kings, which determines the destinies of the Land; house whose royal personages are to be revered! Will anyone else bring forth something as great as Kec? Will any other mother ever give birth to someone as great as its hero Acgi? Who has ever seen anyone as great as its lady Nintud?” ^[18]http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section4/tr4802.htm

In many creation texts describe the absence of a temple as a major part of the pre-cosmic condition. This is clearest in the preamble that concerns the founding of Eridu.

“The holy house, the house of the gods, in the holy place had not yet been made; No reed had sprung up, no tree had been created. No brick had been laid, no building had been set up; No house had been erected, no city had been built; No city had been made, .no creature had been created. Nippur had not been made, E-kur had not been built; Erech had not been created, E-ana had not been built; The Deep had not been created, Eridu had not been built; Of the holy house, the house of the gods, the habitation had not been made. All lands were sea. At that time there was a movement in the sea; Then was Eridu made, and E-sagil was built, E-sagil, where in the midst of the Deep the god Lugal-dul-azaga 1 dwelleth; The city of Babylon was built, and E-sagil was finished.” ^[19]The Seven Tablets of Creation, by Leonard William King, [1902], at sacred-texts.com, http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/stc/stc15.htm

3: The Bible Uses Temple Imagery To Describe The Cosmos Outside Of Genesis.

J. Richard Middleton wrote, “In the Old Testament, perhaps the most important text for our purposes is the oracle recorded in Isaiah 66:1– 2. Attributed by many scholars to Third Isaiah, this oracle calls into question the postexilic attempts of pious Jews to rebuild the Jerusalem temple (which had been destroyed by the Babylonians):

‘Thus says YHWH: Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool. Where could you build a house for me? What place could serve as my dwelling? All this was made by my hand, And thus it all came into being —declares YHWH.’

The text does not say that God has no need for a temple, merely no need for a humanly constructed one, since God has already (by his own “hand”) built a cosmic sanctuary, and that should be sufficient. And this sanctuary in which God dwells is also portrayed as God’s palace, from which God reigns— hence the language of throne and footstool. The cosmic temple, in other words, is clearly equivalent to God’s kingdom.”^[20]Middleton, J. Richard. The Liberating Image (pp. 81-82). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition

Psalm 132:7-8 says, “’Let us go to his dwelling place; let us worship at his footstool!’ Arise, O Lord, and go to your resting place, you and the ark of your might.” (NIV)

This passage refers to The Temple as God’s “resting place”. God “rests” in the temple. God “rests” in Genesis 1, at the end of the creation week. And since we know from Isaiah 66 that God considers the cosmos His resting place (He considers the heavens His throne and the Earth His footstool). In light of this, a strong inference can be made that God considers the cosmos His temple, and what happens in Genesis 1 is the creation of His temple, in which He “rests” at the end.

In conclusion, we have good biblical grounds as well as an antecedent probability from the cultural background that Genesis 1 is depicting the cosmos as the inauguration of God’s temple. For a more thorough treatment, see John Walton’s book “The Lost World Of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and The Origins Debate” as well as Ben Stanhope’s “(Mis)Intepreting Genesis: How The Creation Museum Misunderstands The Ancient Near Eastern Context Of The Bible”.

In this case, the Imago Dei takes on a special significance. When God inaugurated the universe as His cosmic temple over the course of the 7 days, one of the last things that He did was install images of Himself in the universe. This was typical of temple building in the Ancient Near East; you would construct the temple, and the last thing you did was install images of the god in the temple before the spirit of the god moved in to rest in the temple.

Psalm 115 – Divine Imaging As Created

Psalm 115 begins with appeals to God’s glory.

“Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory,
for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!
Why should the nations say,
‘Where is their God?'” (Psalm 115:1-2, ESV)

It seems as though the Psalmist wrote this psalm at a time when Israel was at war with one of their national enemies. And so, the psalmist is appealing to God’s self-interest to motivate Him to give them the victory. The Psalmist should not be understood as trying to hide his self-interest by his appeal “Not to us, O LORD, not to us,” the Psalmist clearly wants himself and his fellow Israelites to survive the war and for the nation to not be conquered by the enemy nation. Rather, we should understand the psalmist as saying, “It is not for our interests only that You should act, God. Think about your own glory! What would nations say if they conquer us! They’ll make a mockery of You by saying ‘where is their God’?” The psalmist appeals to God’s “steadfast love” (Hebrew: hesed) and his faithfulness as well. In the Ancient Near East, warfare wasn’t just fought at the human level, the god(s) of that nation went to battle with the national armies. Yahweh fought for Israel, Dagon fought for Philistia, gods like Ra and Anubis would fight for Egypt, etc. Israel is afraid that if they lose, the enemy nations will think that their gods are stronger than Yahweh! The psalmist goes on to say that their God is in the heavens and does whatever pleases Him (verse 3), and that the gods of the nations are idols of silver and clay, the works of the hands of men. He mocks the pagan gods saying that the idols have various body parts that don’t function. They have eyes that don’t see, ears that don’t hear, feet that don’t walk, noses that don’t smell, and so on. (verses 4-8). As we’ve already seen, this is a stark contrast to the images of Yahweh (Genesis 1:26-27) are the complete opposite of this! Humans do have eyes that see, do have ears that hear, do have feet that walk, etc. The images of God are living images, just as Yahweh is “the living God”. (e.g Jeremiah 10:10, Matthew 16:16). And “Our God is in the heavens. He does all that he pleases” (Psalm 115:3, ESV). Unlike the pagan gods, Yahweh made his own temple; the heavens. That is His dwelling place, and He is ultimately sovereign over all!

Psalm 115:9-11 are exhortations for different Israelite groups to trust in The Lord, for He is their helper and their shield. Biblical scholar Tremper Longman III comments on these verses in the following way; “The three groups directly exhorted to trust God are now told why they should do so. He remembers and blesses them. To remember means more than just being mentally aware of them; it implies action on their behalf. God created humanity in a blessed condition, so to understand what it means for him to bless them (emphasized by a fourfold repetition of the verb bless [brk]), we might think of the Garden of Eden, where humanity’s relationship with God and with each other was harmonious and their material needs were met. The same understanding of blessing can be reached by reading a list of the blessings of the covenant (i.e. Deut. 28:1–14). God does not favour the powerful and rich over the disenfranchized and the poor, or vice versa. All may put their confidence in him.” ^[21]Tremper Longman III, Psalms: An Introduction and Commentary, ed. David G. Firth, vol. 15–16, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2014), 394.

All of this is setting up the conceptual links between Genesis 1 and Psalm 115 that I think make sense of a contentious verse in the debate between soul sleep and a conscious Heaven, so bear with me. Genesis 1:26-27 has God make man in His own image. Psalm 115:4-7 talk about images (i.e idols) of pagan gods and how lifeless they are. Genesis 1 has God make the universe His cosmic temple. Psalm 115:3 tells us that God dwells in the heavens and “does whatever he pleases”. Yahweh is superior to all other gods in every way! And as we’ve seen in the first few verses, there are indications that this was prayed in a military context.

The crux of my thesis here is the final few verses of Psalm 115. Verses 16-18 say
“The heavens are the LORD’s heavens,
but the earth he has given to the children of man.
  The dead do not praise the LORD,
nor do any who go down into silence.
  But we will bless the LORD
from this time forth and forevermore.
Praise the LORD!” (ESV)

Let’s think about the concept of imaging God (Genesis 1:26-27), that and that God has given the Earth to the children of men (Psalm 115:16), and how the next verse (Psalm 115:17) may not be making the case for soul sleep, but may be saying that the dead cannot image God, cannot properly represent God, (I.e praise him) since if we die and go to Heaven (cf. Luke 23:43, 2 Corinthians 5:8), then we are not alive walking around on Earth. Dying and going to Heaven, as nice as that is, given what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, is still a perversion of the way things are supposed to be. Humans were never meant to be the type of thing that dies. God has image bearers in Heaven; his divine sons (see Job 1:6, Job 2:1, Psalm 82:6). His divine council are His images that represent him from Heaven. God addressed his divine council in Genesis 1:26-27 with the proposal of whether or not he should make mankind in their image. Scholars like Michael Heiser, Ben Stanhope, and Ronn Johnson have made a strong case that God is addressing the divine council here; this is not an inter-Trinitarian conversation. ^[22]One resource for the reasons behind this interpretation can be found on The Divine Council Worldview Podcast, “Episode 002: Creation And The Image Of God In Genesis 1”, November 22nd … Continue reading in conjunction with the fact that Genesis 1 is a “Cosmic Temple Inauguration” text, humans are the images of God in His temple, like how the idols of pagan gods visually represented them in their temples. Humans are meant to be embodied. God has representation from Heaven. Humans are meant to represent Him on Earth. So, for a human to die and no longer represent God on Earth is a departure from the natural order of things.

This would not only harmonize Psalm 115:17 with passages like 2 Corinthians 5, which clearly teach that the intermediate state will be a conscious disembodied state, but also explains what “praising” God really means. Many biblical passages in the Psalms speak of trees and other inanimate objects praising God. For example, Psalm 148:3 says “Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars!” (ESV) and Psalm 98:8 says “Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together.” (ESV) ^[23]Depending on how you interpret the stars, these might actually be the exception. Ancient Near Eastern peoples, including the Israelites, often conflated the stars in the sky with the gods of the … Continue reading They are not singing songs. But they are still able to praise him in nonverbal ways. And they praise him in this physical material world. As Christopher Ash wrote of Psalm 148, “The heavenly bodies praise God by being what they are and doing what they do: that is, by exhibiting in their regularities and functions the order that God has placed in creation. The sun praises God by shining, by remaining in its place in this solar system, and so on. The moon praises God by orbiting the earth in a regular manner. There is a sense in which, just by being what they are meant to be, created things speak, as it were, the praise of God. In their regularity, they speak of his faithfulness. In their variety, they speak of his creativity. In their wonder, they speak of his beauty. This principle extends to the rest of the created order. And we too, as created human beings, praise God by living in line with the order and purpose for which he has created us.” ^[24]Christopher Ash, Psalms for You, ed. Carl Laferton, God’s Word for You (The Good Book Company, 2020), 260–261. Dead humans are incapable of doing that. They may be able to sing songs to Yahweh as ghosts in Heaven, but they aren’t able to properly glorify him in the way that they were created to; i.e. as representations of him on the earth. They are not properly being images of God if they are dead and disembodied. This is also why there will be a resurrection (e.g, Daniel 12:2-3, John 11:25-26, 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). It answers the question of the Christian who is an anthropological physicalist, that “If we continue to exist, and our consciousness continues after death, what is the point of there being a bodily resurrection?” The answer is that we were meant to be embodied and to represent Yahweh on Earth. Again, dying and going to Heaven is nice because we are going to be with Jesus in Paradise (Luke 23:43). In Philippians 1, Paul talks about departing and being with Christ as though it were something to look forward to. And it is! Nevertheless, God did not create us to be bodiless souls with no presence in this physical universe. He created us as embodied creatures at the very beginning to image him. This also ties into why murder is such a heinous crime (see Genesis 9:5-6). To destroy a human body is to destroy one of God’s images. Murder is wrong for many reasons, but the reason God gives in Genesis 9 is that it is an act of sacrilege.

And if you read Psalm 115 in its entirety, the glory of God is the concern of the Psalmist. The Psalmist begins asking God to save Israel from her enemies, not simply for their sake, but for the glory of his name (Psalm 115:1). That way the nations would not be able to taunt them by asking “Where is their God?” (Psalm 115:2). The Psalmist adds to his reasons for God to save them; not only so that His name would be glorified to the pagan nations that blaspheme Him, but also because the dead do not praise him (verse 17). Sandwiched in between his request for Yahweh’s rescuing power is a diss of the idols of Israel’s enemies, talking about the different ways in which they are lifeless (verses 4-7). Images of gods, Images of God. The people who are made in the image of Yahweh God are superior to the images of the gods of the pagan nations. Unlike their gods, Yahweh has images of Himself who DO indeed have eyes that see, ears that hear, hands that feel, feet that walk, noses that smell, and Yahweh’s images can cry out through their throats. An ancient Israelite would likely not have missed the point that Yahweh is superior to these other gods because his images are alive and active as opposed to these stupid little statues that adorn pagan temples. This ties thematically into his statement that the dead are not able to praise him (verse 17). Shattered statues cannot serve the god in its proper temple function.

Discussion About Authorial Intent

Now, while I do think the human author did mean to connect the Imago Dei to pagan idols as a polemical contrast, I don’t necessarily think that the human author meant the way I’m taking verse 17 here. From his perspective as a human songwriter, he most likely did not believe in a conscious disembodied afterlife or even a bodily resurrection. I would agree with biblical scholar Tremper Longman III who writes in several places in his Tyndale commentary on Psalms that “During much of the Old Testament period, God’s people did not have an idea of the afterlife, and the psalmist believes that death is the end of it all.” ^[25]Tremper Longman III, Psalms: An Introduction and Commentary, ed. David G. Firth, vol. 15–16, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2014), 320. and “…the teaching about the afterlife developed during the late Old Testament (Dan. 12:1–3) into the intertestamental period and blossomed in the New Testament..” ^[26]Tremper Longman III, Psalms: An Introduction and Commentary, ed. David G. Firth, vol. 15–16, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2014), 137–159. This would pit the author of Psalm 115 against Jesus and Paul who clearly taught a conscious intermediate state. 2 Corinthians 5 is probably the most explicit passage in the entire New Testament.  Paul said “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile, we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:1-8, NIV) Statements like “Away from the body and at home with The Lord” and the analogies of being “in” your tent, clothed with your flesh (as opposed to being naked, which is the metaphor for the disembodied state) make no sense on physicalism. In Luke 23:43, Jesus told the thief of the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise”. What Jesus meant by “Paradise” cannot plausibly mean the new heavens and earth that the resurrected faithful will live on because Jesus gives a very precise time indicator; TODAY! Jesus said, “TODAY you will be with me in paradise”. Neither Jesus nor the thief was resurrected into the new creation that very day. Jesus had to wait at least the span of a weekend. The best explanation is that their souls went to a paradisical abode as soon as they drew their last breaths. Because of these and a few other passages, I cannot accept that Psalm 115:17 is teaching something like soul sleep. Don’t get me wrong. If The Bible taught soul sleep or physicalism, then that is what I would affirm. However, the issue is with reconciling texts that seem to be saying two different things.

Another possibility I’ve considered and rejected is divine accommodation. Theopedia correctly defines Divine Accommodation as follows; “Divine accommodation means that God has accommodated various truths about himself and the world in such a way that they can be comprehended by the human mind. Accommodation is both a corollary of divine revelation (how God reveals himself) and hermeneutics (how we interpret the Bible).” ^[27]Theopedia, Interpretation Of The Bible, “Divine Accomodation” — https://www.theopedia.com/divine-accommodation. Long time readers of this blog will probably remember me talking about this in regards to the “Dome Cosmology” found in the pages of scripture. ^[28]See, for example, my articles “Objections To Concordism NOT Answered” and “Objections To Concordism STILL Not Answered: A Response To Alexander Young”. And although long time readers will know I am generally not a fan of him and the “ism” named after him, the idea of divine accommodation is usually associated with the theology of the Protestant Reformer John Calvin and he has some good things to say about this. For example, he wrote, “Indeed, that they dared abuse certain testimonies of Scripture was due to base ignorance; just as the error itself sprang from execrable madness. The Anthropomorphites, also, who imagined a corporeal God from the fact that Scripture often ascribes to him a mouth, ears, eyes, hands, and feet, are easily refuted. For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to “lisp” in speaking to us? Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness.” ^[29]John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1.13.1. Biblical scholar Kenton Sparks wrote “Accommodation is God’s adoption in inscripturation of the human audience’s finite and fallen perspective. Its underlying conceptual assumption is that in many cases God does not correct our mistaken human viewpoints but merely assumes them in order to communicate with us.” ^[30]Kenton Sparks, God’s Word in Human Words, 230–31.

I do think that divine accommodation is a feature of the scriptures, and so we who affirm that The Bible is God’s inspired and inerrant word (2 Timothy 3:16-17) need not be spooked when we find talk of the sky being made of a solid material that is over a flat earth, and that this “firmament” is supported by the “pillars of the earth”. ^[31]See Peter Enns, “The Firmament Of Genesis 1 Is Solid, But That’s Not The Point”, January 14th 2010, BioLogos.org, –> … Continue reading. Because God had much to teach his children, but science wasn’t on the curriculum. The theological truths He wanted to convey would go through. However, it is one thing to say that God wouldn’t teach the Israelites about a round Earth and evolution on the grounds that it would confuse them, lead to unbelief, or just distract them from God’s primary messages. It’s another to say that God would cater to incorrect theology or religious beliefs. Let’s keep in mind what divine accommodation is; it’s God communicating in ways that use manners of speaking that may not necessarily reflect the literal nature of things. God reveals Himself as a male deity because ancient Hebrew had no genderless pronouns, ^[32]See my essay “The Gender Of God Explained” for a more thorough discussion on this., God teaches about how He rules the physical universe using their picture of what the world looks like, and so on. But if there is or isn’t a conscious intermediate state, why not just say that? It seems like they could have easily understood that. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of accommodation going on here. Moreover, when Jesus interacted with the Pharisees and Sadducees, He didn’t accommodate His teachings to their false religious beliefs. Indeed, that’s one of the several reasons why they didn’t like Him! In particular, in Matthew 22:23-33, some Saducees tried to make the resurrection look ridiculous by imagining a scenario in which a woman has several husbands who all die on her consecutively, and then she dies too, and they ask him who will be married to the woman in the resurrection, given that they all had her. Jesus responds to the attempted reductio ad absurdum by saying that there won’t be marriage in the resurrection at all, but that the faithful will be like the angels in Heaven. Right after that, he then goes “And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” (verse 31-32, ESV). And so, I am very hesitant to appeal to divine accommodation when it comes to expressed religious beliefs in the text. Scientific beliefs are one thing, but theological beliefs are another.

And so, again, I want the reader to understand that I do respect the original human author’s intent. I don’t think we can get away from the fact that this author thinks there is no afterlife whatsoever. Nevertheless, I think the reason why The Holy Spirit allowed this into the text is because, as I said, there is a sense in which the dead do not praise God. Even if we continue to exist as disembodied souls and praise God in song, we are not praising Him with our lives in the way that the sun, moon, mountains, rivers, and other things on Earth praise God. We are to image God, to represent Him on Earth. We can’t do that if are either wiped out of existence at biological death or whisked away to another world. In New Testament terms, we are the salt of the Earth and the light of the world (Matthew 5:13-14). We can’t be the salt of the earth if we’re not living on the earth. We can’t be the light of the world if we’re not living in the world. Christians who lived a thousand years ago cannot represent God to me. The best they can achieve is to speak beyond the grave through their writings, but, of course, not every Christian in history became an author. The human author meant “The dead do not praise The Lord” in one way, but The Holy Spirit meant it in another way. The fancy theological term for this mode of interpretation is called sensus plenior.

Summary and Conclusion

There are several conceptual links between Genesis 1 and Psalm 115 concerning the superiority of Yahweh over all the pagan gods, and what it means to be an image of God. And so, if we take Psalm 115 and cross-reference it with Genesis 1:26-27, which I think is proper given the explicit reference to the images of god in Psalm 115:4-8 (having eyes that see not, ears that hear not, and so on), then I think we get an idea of what these verses like Psalm 115:17 mean. This verse does not intend to imply that there is no conscious, intermediate state, which would contradict biblical passages like 2 Corinthians 5 and Luke 23:43 to name just a couple of examples, at least not from The Holy Spirit’s perspective. Rather, it is about displaying the glory of God here on Earth as we were created to. Psalm 30:9 is a similar verse which says “Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?” Notice that telling of faithfulness is clearly verbal. And this is placed in Hebraic parallelism with the dust, praising God, or the dust not praising God in this case.

We were meant to praise God by being embodied creatures who bear His image, who represent Him to the rest of creation. The idea of praising God by doing what you were created to do is captured in the earlier quote by Christopher Ash from “The Psalms For You”. Although Christopher Ash was commenting on Psalm 145, what he says is applicable to Psalm 115, and the interconnected web of concepts found there: divine imaging, being saved from being killed by God’s enemies not for their sake but for God’s glory (Psalm 115:1-2), being made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27), etc.