the visible shape of something: the outline the eye actually takes in, and therefore the thing an image would have to copy
This word names what a thing looks like: the shape it presents to the eye, definite enough that someone could reproduce it. It is not the copy. An image (צֶלֶם) is the object a craftsman makes, and a pattern (תַּבְנִית) is the working model he builds to, while this word is the shape itself, the appearance a viewer takes in and a sculptor sets out to reproduce.
Seven of its ten appearances stand in the laws and sermons against making images of God, and the argument there runs straight through this one word. Israel heard a voice at the mountain and saw no shape, so there is no shape of God for anyone to carve. The ban then spreads out through the whole created order, forbidding the form of male or female, of animal, bird, creeping thing and fish, of sun, moon and stars, so that nothing that can be seen may stand in for the God who was not seen.
The other three appearances go the opposite way, and they are why so much hangs on so small a word:
- God says that Moses, unlike any other prophet, beholds His form.
- A psalmist expects that when he awakes he will be satisfied with God's form.
- Something halts in front of Job's friend Eliphaz in the night, a shape he cannot make out, and then a voice speaks.
That tension is not a copying accident, and nothing in the Hebrew smooths it over. The ancient Greek translators clearly felt it: wherever the Hebrew says a form of God was seen, their version puts in the word for "glory", or rearranges the sentence, or in Job flatly reverses it into "no form was before my eyes". Scholars still argue about what the scene at the mountain denies, whether that God has a shape at all or only that anyone on earth may see it and copy it. What nobody doubts is that one narrow, concrete word is doing both jobs, because it is exact enough to name a shape that could be carved and exact enough to be flatly denied.
Nuances
What Moses is said to see when God declares that he beholds the form of the LORD, and whether the clause claims a real visual manifestation or is chiefly asserting the directness of God's speech with him. The tension with the warning elsewhere that no one may see God's face and live drives the debate.
- majorityA genuine, perceptible manifestation of God, close to a manifestation of the divine glory, but short of God's face; the accompanying idiom of speaking mouth to mouth signals unmediated communication rather than literal facial contact, which keeps the verse compatible with the warning that God's face cannot be seen.; Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 1-20 (Anchor Bible 4, Doubleday, 1993); Jacob Milgrom, Numbers (JPS Torah Commentary, Jewish Publication Society, 1990)
- contestedA survival of an older, frankly anthropomorphic tradition in which YHWH has a body that exceptional individuals may perceive, standing in unresolved tension with the later prohibition of any divine form.; Martin Noth, Numbers: A Commentary (Old Testament Library, SCM Press, 1968); Philip J. Budd, Numbers (Word Biblical Commentary 5, Word Books, 1984); Benjamin D. Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge University Press, 2009); Esther J. Hamori, "When Gods Were Men": The Embodied God in Biblical and Near Eastern Literature (BZAW 384, de Gruyter, 2008)
- minorityThe clause functions to establish Moses' unrivalled prophetic standing against rival claimants, and the question of what he actually saw should be left open rather than pressed.; Timothy R. Ashley, The Book of Numbers (New International Commentary on the Old Testament, Eerdmans, 1993); Dennis T. Olson, Numbers (Interpretation, Westminster John Knox, 1996)
What the psalmist expects to see, and when, in the closing promise that on awaking he will be satisfied with God's form. The parallel line about beholding God's face and the reference to awaking are read either as a dawn encounter in the sanctuary or as life after death.
- majorityA dawn theophany: the psalmist spends the night at the sanctuary awaiting a divine word or verdict and at daybreak encounters the manifest presence of YHWH, as in other psalms that speak of morning as the time of answer; the parallel word for God's face confirms that this word names divine presence rather than making a claim about God's essence.; Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 1-59 (Continental Commentaries, Fortress Press, 1993); Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 1-50 (Hermeneia, Fortress Press); Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (Word Biblical Commentary 19, Word Books, 1983); John Goldingay, Psalms, Volume 1: Psalms 1-41 (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms, 2006); Nancy L. deClaisse-Walford, Rolf A. Jacobson and Beth LaNeel Tanner, The Book of Psalms (New International Commentary on the Old Testament, Eerdmans, 2014)
- minorityAn expectation of resurrection: the awaking is waking from death, and the form of God is the vision of God enjoyed by the righteous in the life to come.; Mitchell Dahood, Psalms I: 1-50 (Anchor Bible 16, Doubleday, 1966)
Whose form stood before Eliphaz in his night vision, and whether the reader is meant to trust the message it delivers. The unsettling details of the scene, the speaker's admission that he could not identify what he saw, and God's later rebuke of Eliphaz all bear on the question.
- contestedA deliberately vague and sinister apparition: the vision is left unidentifiable on purpose, and its vagueness together with the night terror surrounding it is meant to make the reader suspicious of Eliphaz's claim to have received a revelation.; David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20 (Word Biblical Commentary 17, Word Books, 1989); Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job (Old Testament Library, SCM Press, 1985); Samuel E. Balentine, Job (Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary, 2006); C. L. Seow, Job 1-21: Interpretation and Commentary (Illuminations, Eerdmans, 2013)
- contestedAn angelic or spirit being, understood against Mesopotamian dream and omen reports in which a divine messenger appears at night.; Marvin H. Pope, Job (Anchor Bible 15, Doubleday, 1965); Edouard Dhorme, A Commentary on the Book of Job (Nelson, 1967)
- minorityA genuine appearance of God, so that Eliphaz reports a real theophany even if he draws the wrong conclusions from it.; John E. Hartley, The Book of Job (New International Commentary on the Old Testament, Eerdmans, 1988)
- contestedA deceptive or demonic spirit, parallel to the lying spirit of 1 Kings 22 and the unclean spirit of Zechariah 13:2, mimicking a theophany while carrying a distorted message; the hair-raising language draws on Mesopotamian ghost and demon encounters.; James E. Harding, "A Spirit of Deception in Job 4:15? Interpretive Indeterminacy and Eliphaz's Vision", Biblical Interpretation 13 (2005); Mart-Jan Paul, Oudtestamentische Studien 68 (2016); John Burnight, "Is Eliphaz a False Prophet?", Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 46 (2021); Shalom M. Paul, Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (1983)
Disputed
What the sermon in Deuteronomy 4 is denying when it insists that Israel saw no form at Horeb, and therefore how far this word's reference reaches. The same word that is denied there is granted to Moses in Numbers 12:8 and to the psalmist in Psalm 17:15, and the four live readings weigh that tension differently.
- contestedThe denial is about God's nature: this theology rejects the premise that God has a form at all, and it recasts the older warning that seeing God is lethal so that hearing God takes the dangerous place that sight once held.; Ronald S. Hendel, "Aniconism and Anthropomorphism in Ancient Israel", in Karel van der Toorn (ed.), The Image and the Book: Iconic Cults, Aniconism, and the Rise of Book Religion in Israel and the Ancient Near East (Peeters, 1997); Karel van der Toorn (ed.), The Image and the Book: Iconic Cults, Aniconism, and the Rise of Book Religion in Israel and the Ancient Near East (Peeters, 1997)
- contestedThe denial is about location, not existence: God has a body, but it remains permanently in heaven and only the divine name dwells in the sanctuary, so the ban preserves the uniqueness of the original rather than declaring it nonexistent.; Benjamin D. Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge University Press, 2009); Andreas Wagner, God's Body: The Anthropomorphic God in the Old Testament (T&T Clark, 2019)
- contestedThe passage is exhortation rather than metaphysics: it presses hearing and obedience over seeing, and should not be read as a statement about whether God has a shape.; Nathan MacDonald, Deuteronomy and the Meaning of "Monotheism" (Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2/1, Mohr Siebeck, 2003)
- contestedThe target is specifically an image of Israel's own God: since foreign gods are already excluded by the first commandment, the prohibition of a form can only be aimed at representations of YHWH, and it is a corrective composed late rather than an ancient inheritance.; Matthias Kockert, Zeitschrift fur Theologie und Kirche 106 (2009); Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel (Fortress Press, 1998)