likeness, image, similitude
Demut carries the core sense of resemblance, a likeness that reflects something else. Its root suggests a traced outline, a copy drawn from an original. When you look at a shadow on the wall, you recognize the person casting it without seeing the person directly. That is the territory demut occupies.
In Genesis 1:26, God says let us make humanity in our image, after our demut. The word adds precision to the companion word tselem (image). Where tselem emphasizes a concrete, physical representation, demut softens it into something more like correspondence or analogy. Together they say: humanity is not merely a rough symbol of God, humanity is a carefully shaped likeness, a being that genuinely corresponds to its Maker.
The prophet Ezekiel reaches for demut more than any other biblical writer. In his throne-vision, everything he sees is qualified with demut: the creatures had a likeness of a man, above the expanse was a likeness of a throne, seated on the likeness of a throne was a likeness as it were of a human form. Ezekiel uses the word like a humble disclaimer. He is not saying he saw God directly. He is saying the vision was real, but his language can only trace the outline.
In Isaiah 40:18, the word turns polemical. To whom will you liken God, what demut will you compare to him? The idol-maker reaches for demut and falls short. Human beings bear it by design. Carved wood and hammered gold are assigned it by delusion.
Demut is the word for genuine, God-given resemblance. It is not identity. It is not metaphor. It is something in between, the real but partial reflection of one person in another.
Most of us read Genesis 1:26 and hear image and likeness as two ways of saying the same thing. I did for years. It felt like emphasis, like saying true and real when you want someone to believe you. But demut is doing something specific. It is the word for traced resemblance, the kind where the copy genuinely corresponds to the original without being identical to it.
That precision matters when you're sitting with someone who doubts their worth, or when you're standing in front of your own mirror struggling to believe that what you see there carries God's mark. Demut says you were not stamped with a vague spiritual quality. You were shaped to genuinely correspond to your Maker. The resemblance is real, it is designed, and nothing you have done has dissolved it.
Demut derives from the Hebrew root דמה (d-m-h), meaning to resemble, to be like, to compare. This root produces the verb damah (to be similar), the noun demut (likeness, form), and the closely related word dimyon (imagination, comparison). The same root appears in Psalm 144:4 where human life is compared to a breath. The semantic range moves between resemblance, comparison, and analogy. In Aramaic, the cognate root carries similar meaning and appears across Semitic languages with consistent reference to similarity and likeness.
Where demut appears in Scripture, and why each verse showcases it.
Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.'
Demut appears here alongside tselem in the founding statement of human dignity. The pairing of both words is deliberate, with demut specifying the nature of the correspondence between Creator and creature.
And above the expanse over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance.
Ezekiel uses demut repeatedly through his vision as a theological guardrail, signaling that what he saw was real and overwhelming but that his language can only trace its outline, not contain it.
To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him?
The rhetorical question uses demut to expose the bankruptcy of idol-making. What idols grasp at by human construction, human beings already carry by divine design.
When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.
Moses deliberately echoes the Genesis 1:26 language here, with demut and tselem both appearing. The pattern of likeness passes from God to Adam and then from Adam to Seth, tracing the image through human generations.
When King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, he saw the altar that was at Damascus. And King Ahaz sent to Uriah the priest a model of the altar, and its pattern, exact in all its details.
Here demut is translated as model or pattern, a precise architectural reproduction. This usage grounds the word in concrete, physical likeness rather than abstract concept and illuminates how seriously ancient readers took the idea of genuine correspondence.
Words in the same semantic family.
Every video where Adam teaches on this word, in publication order.
This word is studied in depth in the following monthly Bible studies.
