YHWH built the house before he inhabited it. He built it in the shape of himself. Then he breathed into it, the first down payment of what the full inhabitation would one day be.
Document 2 of 10
The previous document established the foundation. The first letter of the Torah is a Bet (house), drawn as a house in the Paleo-Hebrew pictographic script Moshe used, enlarged in every Torah scroll ever written, the first picture the covenant testimony shows before any word is complete or any creation begins. YHWH’s opening statement to all of creation is the picture of a dwelling place. The house was declared before anything was made.
This document asks what happened next in the building project. Before YHWH could inhabit the house, before the substance could fill the form, the house had to be built. And YHWH built it in the most intimate way possible. He built it in the shape of himself. He made the house out of the same material as the one who would move into it. He cast his own shadow into physical flesh and breathed his own breath into the nostrils of what he had shaped, and the house stood up and opened its eyes and began to move.
This is what the creation of humanity is in the covenant testimony. Not the creation of servants to worship YHWH from a distance. Not the creation of subjects to be governed by divine law. The construction of the house that YHWH intended from before the creation began, the first letter declared it, to inhabit.
YHWH did not build a house and then look for someone to live in it. YHWH built the house in the shape of himself, tzelem (shadow or image) and demut (likeness or resemblance), so that the house would be the right form for the one who built it to move into.
Genesis 1:26, Na’aseh adam betzalmenu kidmutenu. Let us make adam (the human being, the word adam comes from adamah, the ground, the earth, the material from which the physical form was shaped) in our tzelem (shadow or image, the form cast by the substance) and after our demut (likeness or resemblance, the correspondence between the created form and the creating nature).
One YHWH speaking from within himself, from the registers of his own divine being, about what kind of house he was building. The na’aseh (let us make, the plural of self-address, YHWH speaking within himself as established in Document 4 of the Being One series) is not a committee deliberating. It is one divine nature determining, from within its own echad (unified wholeness), the specifications of the house it is building for itself. The blueprints drawn from the inside. The house shaped to fit the one who will inhabit it, because the one who will inhabit it is also the one designing it.
Tzelem and demut together give us the blueprint. The tzelem is the shadow, the form of the original cast into physical material. Every shadow carries the recognizable shape of the one casting it. The shadow of a house looks like a house. The shadow of a hand looks like a hand. The tzelem of YHWH, humanity, carries in physical flesh the recognizable form of the divine nature. Not a photographic reproduction. A shadow, the outline, the shape, the correspondence of form between the original and the casting.
The demut is the resemblance, the deeper correspondence between the created being and the creating one. Not just the physical form but the nature. The capacity for relationship. The ability to enter covenant. The faculty of knowing and being known. The creative intelligence that names and orders and makes. The capacity for love that gives without requiring return. These are demut qualities, they do not merely resemble YHWH’s form from the outside. They correspond to YHWH’s nature from the inside. The house was built to be the kind of dwelling that would suit the one moving in, not just the right shape but the right nature.
The tzelem (shadow) gives the house its form. The demut (likeness) gives the house its nature. Together they produce a created being that is the right shape and the right character to be the dwelling place of one YHWH.
And then the breath. Genesis 2:7, vayipach beappav nishmat chayyim. And he breathed into his nostrils nishmat chayyim (the breath of life, nishmat from neshamah, the breath of YHWH himself, the animating breath of the divine being; chayyim, life, the plural of life in Hebrew always implying fullness and richness of living). And the adam became a nephesh chayyah (a living soul, nephesh, a breathing creature, a being animated by breath; chayyah, alive).
YHWH did not animate the human being by speaking a word over it, as he had created light and waters and land and living creatures, let there be, and there was. He breathed into the nostrils. Directly. Intimately. The neshamah (breath) of YHWH entering the physical form of the tzelem, the divine breath filling the human house for the first time. Not the full inhabitation. Not the complete filling of the house with the divine substance. But the first breath of the one who built the house entering the house he built. A down payment. A foretaste. A declaration that the house was made to be filled with this breath, with this very breath, the breath of YHWH, and that one day the filling would be complete.
Every human being who has ever drawn breath has drawn YHWH’s breath. The neshamah of YHWH is what makes the tzelem alive. Not an independent human life force that exists apart from YHWH. The breath of the one who built the house, still moving through the house he built, still present in every human being who carries the tzelem of the divine nature in physical flesh. The house has never been without the breath of the builder. From the first moment of human existence the breath of YHWH has been in the house, animating it, sustaining it, declaring by its very presence that the house was made for more than breath alone. Made for the full inhabitation. Made for the one whose shadow it is to move in completely.
Every human being who has ever drawn breath has drawn YHWH’s breath. The neshamah (breath of life) in every human being is the breath of the one who built the house, still present, still animating, still declaring that the house was made for full inhabitation.
This is why the cross is not a repair operation. It is a completion. The house was not damaged by the fall, the tzelem did not lose its form, the demut did not lose its correspondence, the neshamah did not stop animating the human frame. What happened in the fall is what Document 2 of the He Could Swear By No Greater series established, the condition of sleep. The house was built. The breath was in it. But the house became separated from awareness of the one who built it, asleep to the full inhabitation that the Bet of Bereshit had declared before the creation began. The tzelem was still the shape of YHWH. The demut was still the nature of YHWH. The neshamah was still the breath of YHWH. But the house was asleep to what it was, and to who had always been its intended inhabitant.
The cross is YHWH waking the house up by entering it from the inside. Not repairing a broken structure. Not creating a new one. Filling the house he always built to fill, with the fullness of the divine substance that the shadow was always cast to carry. The Bet of Bereshit was always pointing toward this moment. The tzelem was always built for this filling. The neshamah was always the down payment of what the complete inhabitation would be. And the cross, the nail the Son drove by his own willing hand, the passage between the pieces completed in the aloneness the covenant required, is the moment YHWH moved fully into the house he built for his own habitation. For all flesh. From Adam. For all who slept. The house was always his. He was always coming home to it.
The house was built in the shape of the one who would inhabit it. The breath was the down payment. The cross was the full arrival. YHWH coming home to what he built.
Tzelem (shadow or image) — the form of YHWH cast into physical flesh.
Demut (likeness or resemblance) — the nature of YHWH corresponding in the created being.
Neshamah chayyim (breath of life) — YHWH’s own breath animating the house he built.
The house was built in the shape of the builder.
The breath of the builder was in the house from the first moment.
The cross is not repair.
The cross is arrival. YHWH coming home.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams