Gen 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:

Verse of the Month - Genesis 1:26

wmlub Mdah ta Myhla arbyw

The Revised Standard Version translation for this passage is “So God created man in his own image”. As we shall see, this translation is very Western and is missing the Eastern flavour of the original text. Below is a translation, word for word, followed by a translation reflecting the Eastern meaning.

arbyw (vay-yeev-rah)
The word arb (bara) is a verb, literally meaning “to fatten” as well as “to fill”. It is often translated as “create” as in this verse as well as in Genesis 1:1 but the concept of “creating” is a western abstract and not the true meaning of arb. When the y (Y) is prefixed to the verb it identifies the subject of the verb as masculine and singular (he) and the verb tense as imperfect (will fill). The first letter prefixed to the word is the w (V) meaning “and”. When this letter is prefixed to a verb it switches the tense of the verb. In this case the perfect tense verb becomes imperfect. The word arbyw would literally be translated as “and he filled”.

Myhla (eh-lo-hiym)
The root of this word is hwla literally meaning “strength” and “power” and is usually translated as God or god (a powerful one). The My is the masculine plural suffix. The word Myhla can be translated as “gods” (quantitative plural) or as “God” (qualitative plural) in the sense of being a very powerful god. As this noun follows the verb we know that it is the subject of the verb, the “he” in the word arbyw.

ta (et)
This word preceeds a direct object of a verb telling us that the next word is “what was filled”. This word is a grammatical tool used in Biblical Hebrew and has no equivelant in English and is therefore never translated.

Mdah (ha-ah-dahm)
The first letter, h (H), is a prefix meaning “the”. The word Mda (adam) means “man” and is also the name of the first man - Adam. Because it is prefixed by the article h, we know that this word should be translated as “man” rather than Adam.

wmlub (beh-tsahl-mo)
The word Mlu (tselem, the mem is written as M when at the end of a word, and as m otherwise) is an outline or form of an original and comes from the parent root lu (tsal) meaning “shadow”. A shadow is a also representation of an original. The prefix b (B) means “in” or “with”. The suffix w (O) means “of him” or “his”.

And the Great Powerful One filled the man with a representation of himself,

source: Ancient-Hebrew.org

Likeness, image, appereance,  demuwth, from the root damah, to be like, become like, make oneself like. Here it is prefixed by a Chaf meaning like, as.

, like/after his likeness.

Compare to Gen 5, 3 Adam [man, Adam] begat/brought forth in his own likeness (Beth prefix in/with), after his image (chaf prefix as, like)

See also likeness in Ezekiel chapter 1, 8 and 10.