Humanity is under siege. Having cooperated with Satan in rebellion against God, humanity has turned its attention to the destruction of God’s image—ourselves. While wicked cultures perpetually seek to spoil the beauty of God’s image, several recent developments in western culture have “upped the ante.” These include (among others) transgenderism, the unmooring of marriage from biblical norms, and—the highest hand of high-handed sins—abortion.
In January, Stephen Wellum detailed Scripture’s witness of what the image of God is. In this article, I will investigate when Scripture presents God as assigning a creature his image. Specifically, I will argue the image of God is present at the moment of conception. Proving this is not simple. There is no facile proof text such as: “the image of God is present in a sperm-fertilized egg.”
On one hand, Scripture presents texts detailing “what” the image of God—or its likeness[1]—is (Gen. 1:26–27; Gen. 5:1; Gen. 9:6; 1 Cor. 11:7, Jas. 3:7-9). Included here is how for Christians, this image—though fallen—is being restored (1 Cor. 15:47–49; 2 Cor. 3:17–18; Eph. 4:22–24; Col. 3:9–11). Christ himself is the original image, into whose form his followers are being conformed (Rom. 8:29; 2 Cor. 4:4; Heb 1:3). Scripture also describes what life is like in the womb. God knits the human together in utero (Ps. 139:13), God reverses the plight of childlessness through conception (Gen. 25:21; 29:31-32; Luke 1:24-25), and children can even “struggle” in the womb (Gen. 25:23). Further, a phase of the Ordo Salutis—regeneration—is shown to transpire in an embodied soul in the womb (Luke 1:15, 41). This is not an exhaustive list, but shows the variety Scripture uses to describe life from the earliest stages of existence in utero.
1. Image (ṣelem) and likeness (demût) are words that share a similar meaning with different emphases. See Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, 2nd ed. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2018), 235.
However, exegetes contest each of these verses. Vindicating the idea that these qualities in their varied forms constitute “life,” and that we should link these descriptions with the image of God is challenging. Further, much of the language describing those in the womb can also be used to describe non-humans. John the Baptizer leaped in the womb for joy (skirtaō, Luke 1:41), but so do calves (Mal. 3:20 LXX). So that kind of language does not necessarily prove the image of God is present at the moment of conception.
Considering this, I propose a different course. If we can find a text showing a physical characteristic that exists in the womb, and if this physical characteristic is tied explicitly to the image of God, it would follow that wherever this characteristic is present, then so too the image of God is present. As it stands, I believe Genesis 9:4–6 presents just such a case.
To get there, I will first define the image of God. Then, I will examine Genesis 9:4–6 as our text which ties the “life” of humans to their “blood” and simultaneously undergirds this link with the imago Dei. Following this, I will appeal to medical evidence for when “blood” is first present in the human creature in utero. I will then proceed to detail the relationship between “flesh,” “life,” and “blood” as given in Genesis 9:4–6 and in Scripture broadly, where the bridge between God’s image and the conceived baby will be located, a bridge I will invite readers to cross with me to defend and celebrate the sanctity of God’s image in the womb.
Image Defined
Many have set themselves to answering the question: “what is the image of God?” Should we answer that it is substantive, present in our rational and moral faculties, but less so in our bodies? Or is God’s image located in our ability to relate to the “other,” be it God or neighbor? Or should we answer it is our function existing in our God ordained dominion over earth, spoken to man directly after he was created (Gen. 1:28)?
The answer is: “yes,” and “but.”
“Yes,” each of these have truth to them. “But,” as Wellum notes, we should avoid “privileging one aspect of us at the expense of other aspects” and also avoid imposing theological categories onto Scripture without first allowing Scripture to speak for itself.[2] Wellum is correct to note that “image” signifies “what” we are (humans viewed holistically in rule over the world as God’s “vice-regents”), but that image isn’t reduced to merely a list of properties (substantive view), nor our function as “vice-regents,” but includes God’s relational dealings “with creation on the basis of how he deals with humans, which first begins with the covenant headship of Adam.”[3]
2. Stephen Wellum, “Humans: The Image and Likeness of God,” Christ Over All, January 15, 2025. Help in properly calibrating theological interpretation according to Scripture’s own categories is found here: R.B. Jamieson and Tyler R. Wittman, Biblical Reasoning: Christological and Trinitarian Rules for Exegesis (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2022).
3. Wellum, “Humans: The Image and Likeness of God.”
This is helpful for two reasons. First, it does justice to the variety of biblical data, not domesticating divergent areas of Scripture into a preconceived theological mold. Second, Wellum’s formulation as a theological category is sensitive enough to deploy in a search for the image of God across the canon’s varied presentation of it. Scripture doesn’t at every mention of the image of God speak to this image’s substance, function, and relations in the same decibel. There is variety in the biblical presentation. Wellum’s theological formulation is helpful because it accounts for any portion of Scripture that speaks to the image of God, accounting for Scripture’s varied witness but positing a unified theological concept.
I will hold this holistic, tripartite view of the imago Dei as a biblical-theological preunderstanding as I survey the next point: that human life and human blood are sacred, and that God associates these with the image of God.
Lifeblood and the Imago Dei: Building a Bridge from Life and Blood to Image
Now that we have reviewed what the image of God is, we turn to when it is conferred on a human being. To do this, we must expose the connection between the varied biblical and theological descriptions of life in utero and the image of God. Scripture gives a diverse presentation of life inside womb, but it rarely mentions the image (or likeness) of God in these texts. These descriptors (whether it be John the Baptist “leaping” in the womb in Luke 1:41, or Jacob and Esau “struggling” in the womb in Genesis 25:22) don’t show an explicit connection to the concept of the image of God. The phrase “image of God” or “likeness” is in fact almost never mentioned when Scripture describes conception, life in the womb, or birth/fathering, with the one exception of Genesis 5:3. Nonetheless, there is a bridge that shows the irrevocable bond between the image of God and human life in all the diversity Scripture presents it in, including in utero.
This bridge is Genesis 9:4–6.
God recasts his original prohibitory command, “you shall not eat,” in Genesis 9:4, developing the original command God gave to Adam, where God blessed Adam and gave him provision (Gen. 2:8–9, 16) but commanded him to “not eat” in Genesis 2:17. Genesis 9:4 is where the conversation of “flesh,” “life,” and “blood” kicks off. Though the prohibition originally starts in how mankind is to relate to animals, the basis for this prohibition is rooted in the worth of man due to his image bearing status (Gen. 9:6). Eating animal flesh with its lifeblood is not wrong in itself, but wrong because the animal lifeblood stands as a symbol for man’s lifeblood, the worth of which is funded by the imago Dei.
Genesis 9:4: “But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.”
God prohibits eating “flesh” with its “life” (nepeš, breath, life),[4] which is its “blood” (dām, blood, bloodshed, bloodguilt, murder).[5] The ESV adds “that is” between nepeš (life) and dām (blood). In Hebrew, the two are placed side-by-side appositionally, where the latter word or concept clarifies and specifies the former, both pointing to a singular reality. Leviticus 17:11 has “life of the flesh is in the blood” where nepeš equates with dām more loosely due to the preposition b (in) governing the noun dām. In Deuteronomy 12:23 we have a stronger equating of one thing with another: “Only be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the flesh.” That is, dām (blood) is (=) nepeš (life).
4. Ludwig Koehler et al., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994–2000), 711. Hereafter HALOT.
5. Willem VanGemeren, ed., New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology & Exegesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), 963. Hereafter NIDOTTE.
On balance, we should not over-interpret our text in Genesis 9:4 to the effect of it saying life=blood. On the other hand, it does appear that the appositional placement of “blood” after “life” with nothing in between is epexegetical, so that dām (blood) explains the preceding noun nepeš (life). The apposition of dām defines “the preceding substantive [nepeš] . . . in order to prevent any possible misunderstanding.”[6] Or as John Calvin notes, “[S]ince there is no copulative conjunction between the two words, blood and life, I do not doubt that Moses, speaking of life, added the word blood exegetically, as if he would say, that flesh is in some sense devoured with its life, when it is eaten imbued with its own blood.”[7]
6. Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, ed. E. Kautzsch and Sir Arthur Ernest Cowley, 2d English ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910), 425.
7. Calvin, John, Commentaries on the Book of Genesis Vol. 1, Trans. John King, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, no date), 293.
An analogy might be helpful. If we think of the sun shining on us in the day, the sensation of heat is tied to the sun’s light. Wherever the sun is, there is also heat (in varying degrees). The Sun and its heat are so intricately linked that it is challenging to conceive of a situation where there could be sunlight but absolutely no heat from this same sun. The relationship between life and blood is similar. They are not ontologically one reality, but each of their individual realities is so wrapped up with the reality of the other that it is challenging to separate the two.
As the text moves ahead, in Genesis 9:5 the prohibition broadens. The lifeblood (nepeš–dām) of man inappropriately spilled requires something: a reckoning (dāraš) that God requires. This reckoning (dāraš) means a life taken creates a void that God demands an accounting for; an exacting. This exacting hangs over the one who takes the life. If we imagine there are two people, and one steals from the other, a debt emerges. Value—as backed by the image of God, and behind this, God himself—is taken from the one and due to be repaid by the other. “Hebrew dāraš in this construction indicates an exacting or calculation and is found in the sense of vengeance.” This accounting in fact places God as the “plaintiff” and the lifeblood stealer as the “culprit.” It is God who demands an accounting, “killing a person who is made in the ‘image of God’ is a blow against God himself.”[8]
8. Matthews, Genesis, 403.
Our text proceeds to Genesis 9:6, where arises a concept in Scripture often termed lex talionis (Latin for “law of retaliation,” e.g. “an eye for an eye”). God bases his prohibition against taking human life on the impregnable rock of the value he places on humans at creation. This value is criminally disregarded when a human (or animal) spills the (life)blood of another human because it tramples underfoot God’s image. Lex talionis “ensures that the punishment is commensurate with the weight of the crime.”[9]
9. Matthews, Genesis, 403f.
Genesis 9:6 exhibits a poetic construction in the form of a chiasm. The ESV renders this appropriately:
Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image. (emphasis added)
Structurally, we have,
A–Sheds
B–Blood
C–Man
C1–Man
B2–Blood
A3–Shed
10. Matthews, Genesis, 404; Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 193, “The tight chiastic formulation (shed, blood, man, man, blood, shed) repeating each word of the first clause in reverse order in the second emphasizes the strict correspondence of punishment to offence[.]” Note “whoever” in English in 9:6a is supplied where in Hebrew it is absent. The offending person is given in huʾ (a personal pronoun) in 9:6b (by man his blood shall be shed…).”
This mirroring of words—a chiasm—exhibits a tightly knit connection between crime and punishment.[10] Centering the chiasm—bringing a sense of primacy—is the murdered human (C). The centrality of man in this construction stresses the importance of mankind’s blood. It is essential, with incomparable value in creation. The central counterpart, mutually interpreting Genesis 9:6a, is the accounting demanded which also comes by a human (C1, Gen. 9:6b). C1 is not the offending party, but another person repaying the debt of taken (life)blood by taking the (life)blood of the offender.[11] Whoever takes a brother’s life, in the words of Calvin, “draws down upon himself the blood and life of his brother.”[12] As Gentry and Wellum note, speaking of murder generally, “God requires retributive justice. That is, the penalty for taking a life is paying a life. Thus God holds the community responsible; he demands an accounting from society.”[13]
11. See Hamilton, Typology, 334f for his discussion of chiasms and the use of structure and synergy in interpretation. Regarding the central piece of a chiasm, Hamilton recognizes it as often the most important element. “[A]s with synergy, so with structure and boundaries—understanding chiastic form proves exegetically productive as it allows readers to determine what the author has presented as central.” See also page 333 of the same work, where Hamilton discusses single line chiasms, most often used in the Psalter.
12. Calvin, Genesis, 295.
13. Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant, 200.
Murder—the shedding of an image bearer’s blood—is a sinfully intimate affair, true. Nevertheless, God’s question to Cain, “What have you done?” remains open before us, the blood of the unborn—our brother—crying out from the ground all around. It demands an answer, one which society itself must give (Gen. 4:10).
The reason such an exact equation of “blood for blood” must be equalized is given in 9:6c: because God made man in his image. No higher ground exists for the sanctity of life than God’s decree that it should be so. God’s image is so valuable because God himself is infinitely worthy and deemed it proper to make for himself an audience of facsimiles (people), into which he would pour his glory and from which this God-vested refulgence would shine back. Mankind, having nothing of its own, is invested with the worth of God that God finds mete to grant, God looking “upon his own gifts in them . . . thereby excited to love and to care for them.” God’s sanction to protect his image means that injury to a human with life and blood in them is an affront to God. This God-invested worth makes sacred the blood and life of God’s image bearers.[14]
14. Calvin, Genesis, 295f.
This generates a question: when is “blood” in the above sense found in the womb? For when the blood is present in the Genesis 9:6 sense, there exists also the image of God, proving that abortion is sin.
When Does a Conceived Human Develop Blood?
15. I use the scientific nomenclature even through these terms do not clearly express the humanity of the new entity. A “zygote” (sperm-fertilized egg) is the term for the human after conception until about four to seven days out. The zygote will divide many times, eventually splitting into the embryo and placenta, where uterine implantation occurs. “Embryo” is the term for human life in the womb spanning approximately weeks one to three. The fetal stage is week four until birth. See Pranav Kumar Prabhakar, Textbook of Clinical Embryology, (New York: Nova Medicine and Health, 2023).
The exact genesis of human blood between the points of conception (when a sperm fertilizes an egg) until about the fourth week is incredibly complex, technical, and subject to conjecture. Studies haven’t adequately elucidated how hematopoiesis (blood formation) initially arises in a human embryo.[15] Blood cell development begins seven days after conception, when the zygote/embryo generates an early line of hematopoietic cells by signaling to a structure called the “yolk sac” which in turn generates cells called “primitive erythroid cells,” or cells which form red blood cells. Shortly after, a second line of cells (called definitive erythroid cells) “initiate the first wave of definitive hematopoiesis and produce cells of the definitive erythroid lineage.”[16] Moreover, it has been estimated that an embryo has functional erythrocytes (red blood cells) and hemoglobin (oxygen carrying cells) by weeks two through three.[17]
16. Ranbir Singh, Kristina Soman-Faulkner, and Kavin Sugumar, “Embryology, Hematopoiesis,” StatPearls – NCBI Bookshelf, August 14, 2023.
17. William Bloom and G. W. Bartelmez, “Hematopoiesis in Young Human Embryos,” American Journal of Anatomy 67, no. 1 (July 1, 1940): 21–53Canu G, Ruhrberg C. First blood: the endothelial origins of hematopoietic progenitors. Angiogenesis. 2021;24(2):199-211. doi:10.1007/s10456-021-09783-9.
What this means is that within the first seven days after conception, the zygote/embryo has cells in hand with which to make red blood cells. These are cells which will soon form erythrocytes, or red blood cells, a primary component of blood, and which carries with it hemoglobin, which brings oxygen to our bodies. Further, what this also means is, that since the image of God is intimately connected to human blood (and thus is a life protected by God’s Gen. 9:6 sanction), and if a zygote/embryo at the two-to-three-week mark has human blood, there is simply not a biblical leg to stand on for Christians who appeal to science to get out of humans at this stage being image bearers.
But…what about the first two to three weeks? If an embryo doesn’t develop “blood” until 7–14 days post conception, does the sin against God’s image by shedding blood from Genesis 9:6 actually apply?[18]
18. I’m not saying “blood” isn’t present in the embryo until 7–14 days. I’m saying it isn’t obvious to me what differentiates the various cell lines and precursors to “blood” and blood itself as Scripture understands “blood,” especially in Gen. 9:4–6 (more on this below).
To answer this, we must return to Genesis 9 to examine the relationship of flesh to life/blood.
The Flesh and Life/Blood Relationship
The relationship of flesh (bāśār), life (nepeš), and blood (dām) is important for elucidating the relationship between the organic portion of human life and the life-force behind this organic matter which both animates it with an individuality (partitioning it off from other inanimate matter) and proceeds to find itself formalized in human blood. It is also important because it allows Scripture to set the tone for our understanding of the physical and spiritual sides of our nature, and how to properly relate them to one another and the image of God.
“Flesh” in the sense used in Genesis 9:4 is inclusive of both humans and animals, which accords with the use of bāśār elsewhere (Gen 6:12–13, 17, 19; 7:16, 21; 8:17; Lev 17:14; Num 16:22). Though at times bāśār takes a view toward sinful humanity (Gen. 6:12–13), its reservation for living organisms accords better with its use in Genesis 9:4 (cf. Ps. 136:25; Job 12:10; 34:15).
Specifically, it is preeminently involved with the physical, “bāśār is deeply tied to the material and is never used in the sense of ‘appearance, figure’; bāśār is corpus, not figura.” It is contrastively paired with rûaḥ (spirit: Gen. 6:3; Num. 16:22; 27:16; Isa. 31:3; Joel 2:28-29), nepeš (life, breath, soul: Gen. 9:4; Deut. 12:23; Job 14:22), and lēb (heart: Ezek. 44:7, 9; Psa. 84:2).[19] This is important when considering “flesh” in our passage (and the discussion of the sanctity of life from conception), because it allows us to retain bāśār’s view toward animal and human life, but it foregrounds the organic substrate that is intimately connected to “life” but not necessarily synonymous with “life’ or its ultimate precondition.
19. Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann, Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), 284, emphasis original.
The semantic range of nepeš is as fertile as the objects it refers to. The noun alone appears 756 times in the Hebrew bible (the highest concentration in the Psalter). In general, it refers to a breathing substance or being, often equated with the Greek word psychḗ, or the inner being of a human.
Nepeš is regularly distinguished from the “flesh” (bāśār, e.g. Isa. 10:18), and body (e.g. Job 14:22: “He feels only the pain of his own body [bāśār], and he mourns only for himself [nepeš].” Nepeš departs at death and returns with life (Gen. 35:18; Jer. 15:9; Job 11:20; 31:39). In 1 Kings 17:21–22, we see Elijah pray for a boy who is dead, just a body—without nepeš—and God hears his prayers, nepeš returns to the boy, and he lives.[20] Nepeš is at times used as a synecdoche—a figure of speech where a word describing part of something refers to the whole—such as in Leviticus 4:2 where it is used for the whole person.[21] Surprisingly, nepeš can even refer to a corpse, as in Leviticus 21:11, where Moses gives the people an injunction from God that none are to go near a dead body (nepeš). Most notably, it is God’s sovereign hand that shapes the lifeless ground (ʾadāmâ) into a form and “breathes” into it (nāpaḥ). This nāpaḥ instantaneously animates the dust, which is then a living creature (nepeš, Gen. 2:7; cf. Ezek. 37:9).
20. Briggs, Charles A. “The Use of נֶפֶשׁ in the Old Testament.” Journal of Biblical Literature 16, no. 1/2 (1897): 17–30. .
21. Willem VanGemeren, ed., NIDOTTE, 133.
What this means is that the breath of God applied to the organic material of a creature is fundamental to a creature’s ontological status as “living creature.” The given breath of God (nepeš)[22] is the precondition for the organic material to formalize itself through all its physiological and anatomic processes, including blood formation. But if nepeš is preconditional, then this means it necessarily exists a priori to the physical elements (blood) which we usually recognize as equivalent to “physical life,” otherwise the physical elements (our blood and tissues) would be on the same fundamental level, nepeš and dām both being ultimately causative of life (rather than blood being a consequence of life [nepeš]). In 1 Kings 17:17–24, where the boy’s body was lifeless, his cellular and physiological processes (blood formation included) had ceased, as no breath was in him. It is only when God applies again nepeš that these physiological processes start anew, which we would call resurrection.
22. Nāpaḥ is God breathing, nepeš the result.
This idea of the a priori nature of nepeš to dām is also keeping with Moses’ syntactical construction of the two in Genesis 9:4, where nepeš is the anchor word to dām, the “appositive,” or the word of clarification. Each word in an apposition carries with it a different semantic notion, but also, the second element (appositive) is amended to the first in order to make specific what the two refer to together.[23] This means that life is the fundamental principle, and blood is placed syntactically alongside it to both narrow and point to the specific referent, namely, living beings with God-given blood pulsing through them. This fact that life (nepeš) stands logically behind blood (dām) though shows that it is fundamentally prior, and not necessarily exhausted by blood in meaning (or reality), but merely formalized by it.
23. McAffee, Matthew, and Hardy, H. H., II. Going Deeper with Biblical Hebrew: An Intermediate Study of the Grammar and Syntax of the Old Testament. Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2024. Accessed January 28, 2025. ProQuest Ebook Central. Created from sbts-ebooks on 2025-01-28 17:47:58.
This does not remove the importance of our physical nature to our status as image bearers. We must remember that salvation itself involves God’s plan to create for himself a physical reality that results in the praise of his glorious grace, which includes our glorified bodies (Rom. 8:18–25; 1 Cor. 15: 35–58; Eph. 1:6, 12, 14; 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 7:9–10). Further, salvation is predicated on Christ coming in the likeness of our flesh. Christ having a true human nature—including a body—is crucial for salvation. The Lord Jesus was tempted at all points as a man but overcame victoriously (Heb. 4:15). To do so, he had to assume all the characteristics of humanity—biology included—that we humans have. Or, in the words of Gregory Nazianzus, “For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.”[24] What this means is that our salvation depends on Christ assuming what we are, including our corporality. But if our corporality is included, then so too is our existence where we started in utero—as zygotes, creatures distinct from their parents, though not yet equipped with the full suite of anatomic and physiologic functions that come with physical maturity. Christ needed to assume a human nature, and thus, a human nature—biologically and theologically—is one that begins at conception.[25]
24. Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101, “To Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius” in Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Vol 2, #7, 648.
25. I realize an implication such as “Christ assumed the form of a zygote” puts me on tenuous ground. Also, I do not mean that Christ assumed the form of a human zygote as zygotes usually arise, as a substance formed from the genetic material from one man and one woman. There was no male-generated human sperm that fertilized the ovum in Mary’s womb. The Holy Spirit did something different. What I am saying is that for Christ to assume a human nature, this seems to entail that he developed in the womb like humans, the only difference being his miraculous, immediate conception by God, as opposed to when we are conceived which comes about through secondary causes (nature).
Further, the fact that “blood” in a scientific sense as previously noted isn’t a fixed substance within the window from conception to when the baby becomes an “embryo” or “fetus” doesn’t nullify that these first three weeks still fall under the image of God. First, it isn’t obvious to me why a narrow medical definition of blood should drive our understanding of blood as it pertains to Scripture. True, it may seem obvious that “blood is simply blood . . . the red stuff that comes from our bodies when cut . . . the red stuff that newly formed zygotes don’t technically have.” And yes, it is true that blood (dām) on first blush in the Old Testament does seem simply to refer to this red stuff that comes out of us when we are cut. But if we allow a medical idea of blood to be informed by the biblical principal of blood as it is originally used in Genesis 9:4–6 (and is picked up later in the Tabernacle and Temple service), it becomes clear that the biblical authors were less concerned with the exact physical properties of blood, and more concerned with blood as a symbol so closely associated with the vitality and life of the animal (or person) that the two at times appear indistinguishable (Lev. 3:17; 7:26–27; 17:10–14; 19:26; Deut. 12:16, 23; 15:23; 1 Sam. 14:32–34; Ezek. 33:25).
This opens the doors for what our understanding of blood can be, where the focus lies less on strained, incremental differences that science loves to focus on, and is more focused on the symbolic power and genuine connection of blood to life. If this connection of vitality as seated in a physical substance (blood) holds true and arises from the interpretive perspective of the biblical authors, then we can hardly claim that the biblical authors would have been concerned with scientific minutia, but were more consumed with the idea of a sovereign God creating all things ex nihilo, and at every conception doing nearly the same (Rom. 4:17).
Conclusion
My goal in this essay was to prove the biblical notion that the sanctity of life—as rooted in the image of God—is present at conception, which means that abortion is a grave sin, punishable by the “eye for eye” language originally given in Genesis 9:6. To do this, it was necessary to establish a notion of what the image of God means, and from there to build a “biblical and theological bridge” between the image of God and physical characteristics of humans in the womb. This was needed due to a lacuna I have sensed in this area, where the image of God is appealed to for defending the sanctity of life at conception despite a lack of easy proof texts showing this to be the case. I showed, however, that a bridge does exist between the image of God and human life and blood, and that nepeš as the fundamental principle behind life both subsumes the flesh and blood, and is identified with the same, but is not preconditioned by flesh and blood, and so “life” is readily shown to be at conception, as “life” (nepeš) is in fact the causative principle which generates the physical phenomenon of blood.
In all, the breath of God in his word stands a witness before us, just as it stands as a witness in the life of every human on this planet—the unborn included. It is already irrefutable that God associates his image with human blood, but more, he intimately associates it more importantly with the moment he assigns it to the human person in the womb, this assignment coming in the dark recesses of the womb, which serves as the life-force which gives rise to the whole human enterprise, their physiology included.
