BEARDS
Genesis 1:26–27 states: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. . . .’ And God created the man in His Own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” It should be noted here that “the man” was made “in our image,” in the image of the triune God. Since Yahshua has a beard (Isaiah 50:6), and He is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15, 2 Corinthians 4:4), it can equally be stated that God the Father has a beard. Yes, “God is Spirit,” but the Bible also talks about His back, His hands, His feet, His eyes. Can He not also have a beard? Indeed so, for the Son of God has a beard!
Likewise, it is simple to reason that if the man is made in the image of God, conversely God has a beard. All paintings throughout history confirmingly represent Him as bearded. Since God has a beard, He shared His image with the man and created Him to likewise wear the beard. Since God shared His image with the man, for this cause alone a man seeking to glorify God should be compelled to wear what He has personally shared with him. Gillette and Norelco are cheap and shameful escapes from the image God bears and uniquely shared with the man.
God is a father, not a mother. He is masculine, not feminine. He is the head, and headship is passed down with the image that He shares—to His Son, and then to the man. Headship, as laid out in 1 Corinthians 11:3, begins with Yahweh God and ends with the man. Headship does not extend to the woman, because she is not the image of our Heavenly Father. 1 Corinthians 11:7 specifically states that the man “is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man.” The woman is not the image of man; she is not the shared image of God; but she came from the man to make the man complete—not to compete.
In Genesis 1:27 in the New American Standard, the word “the” that is in the phrase—“God created the man”—is not in the printed text; but it very significantly does exist in the original Hebrew and is thus inserted here. In like manner, in Genesis 9:6 God spoke to Noah, affirming: “for in the image of God He made the man.” This is an important distinction. It was “the man” who was created first, not a man and a woman. Granted, all of mankind was in Adam, as Eve was in Adam; but, Adam was created a man in the image of God. It was “the man” who needed a helper “corresponding to” but not replacing him (Genesis 2:18). This important original text phrase—“the man”—with the definite article “the,” was accurately translated in numerous like verses thereafter: Genesis 2:8, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25; 3:8, 9, 12, 20, 22, 24; and 4:1. It was “the man” who was communing, walking, working on the earth. “The man” clearly identified a man, not a “male and female.”
God created “the man” in “His own image, in the image of God He created him. . . .” The word “him” is very significantly singular, not plural—God created Adam, a man, in His image. Then added separately, the Scriptures go on to say: “male and female He created them.” It does not say: “God created male and female in His own image.” When He made the man, the woman (meaning—“taken out of man,” Genesis 2:23) was in the side of the man. “Male and female He created them,” but not until after He first made the man, conformed to His own father image.
Men are not “in the image of God” when they shave their beards. They become a confusing, distorted mixture—partly in the image of God who made them, and partly in the image of the woman who came out of the man. In the words of Paul, they are “effeminate”
(1 Corinthians 11:14–15). Instead of being clearly identifiable bearded men, they are a woeful mix—woe-men! Woe-men are no longer “in His own image,” but take on the distorted, self-designed appearance of “in his own image,” an image that man fashions of his own creation. Woe-men should quit sending mixed signals! God distinctly forbids it—in dress, hair length, and hair-presence.Men should be absolute, not persuaded by the fashions or expectations of a cursed and corrupted feminized society. They should wear the beard Yahweh has given them from His fatherly image. Unfortunately, the men of our nation fittingly reflect its own feminization, as well as the feminization of the church. The masculine government we received at the founding of this nation was a marvelous and godly design; yet even so, its feminization that was to come was sorely evidenced by the founding father’s clean-shaven feminized appearance. Their feminized facial appearance foreshadowed that which would shamefully befall this nation.
Very interestingly and most significantly, starting in Genesis, the first five instances in which the word “image” (meaning—to form a likeness) is used, four of those instances state that God has made the man in His likeness. Four is the number which denotes God’s creation. And thus, Yahweh God gives testimony to the creation of the man in His image. The fifth usage of the word “image” in Genesis 5:3 replicates this “image” process from men to men: “When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth [who was in the ancestry of Yahshua—Luke 3:38].” Note that it does not state that Adam produced his daughters in his own likeness. No, it was his son, Seth. His daughters were in the likeness of Eve, his wife.
Interestingly, it is the man’s chromosomes that determine the gender of children. The woman has no influence at all on this. The male sex chromosome possesses the determining “x-y” factor, while the female chromosome possesses a nondescript “x-x” factor. Upon fertilization, the woman’s egg can only share an “x” component, while the man’s sperm can contribute either the “x,” which will produce a daughter, or the “y,” which will produce a son. To the son he gives his own chromosomal image. To the daughter he gives the woman’s image.
Five is the number for grace, or God’s goodness. By God’s grace and goodness He continues to share His image with men—from Adam, to Seth, to Yahshua, and to men today.
Throughout the remainder of the Old Testament, the word “image” finds an entirely new usage. No longer does it give testimony to Yahweh’s plan to share His image with the man; but instead, in the remaining eighty-six usages of this word, it now solely denotes man’s attempt to alter and recast His image into perversions and replacements—in other words, man began to make and worship images created by him!
Today, men do the same. The man, who was made in God’s image, seeks to alter His image to conform to the fair-skinned woman who was created from man. Man continues striving to become like (to worship) the created, and not the Creator. This is idolatry to Yahweh God, who has affectionately and purposefully shared His glorious image and likeness with the man. Instead of being the distinct “x-y” image God created, woe-man has become a mutation with the “x-x” image which came from him.
The most compelling argument for men to wear a beard is the fact that it is Yahweh God who placed the beard on man, a reflection of His own image. Man does not go to a fashion store and purchase one, nor does he buy seeds to sprout one, nor does he go to a plastic surgeon and have it added to his face. A beard is not the creation of man. In fact, for a man to not have a beard, he must daily resist God’s creation. Daily he must remove what is God’s persistent will.
Men have beards not because it is something they add to their face. It is a natural, God-given identifying feature specifically for the man. When a man does not have a beard, he must daily alter his face, God’s image, in order to keep from having it. What is more natural than having a beard? What is more fitting with God’s creation from the beginning than having a beard? What is more in keeping with Yahweh God’s order than having a beard? What is more consistent with the image God has shared with “the man” than having a beard? To be otherwise is the creation of idolatrous man, not that of God! Man, by his own hand, becomes a woe-man!
We know Yahweh God did not create anything without a purpose. He did not tritely place hair on the man’s face just because it was a cute, unfulfilling, or even distracting idea, or just to needlessly cover a face. Yahweh gave us hands for a purpose. He gave us feet for a purpose. He gave us eyes, ears, taste, feel, everything for a purpose. He does not make mistakes or add to His creation needlessly. When Yahweh said, “Let there be . . . ,” He included a beard on a man. So let us agree with God and “Let there be” a beard on His created men!
Yahweh has numerous purposes for the beard—to distinguish the sexes, to distinguish from adolescence, to place His image upon the man, and far more, as you will see in Coverings. But when men remove this distinguishing mark, they confuse creation and Yahweh’s order in masculine headship, promoting an unmooring and slipping away from His ways.
Women may shamefully wear our clothes and cut their hair short like ours. They may aberrantly work at our jobs and join the military. They may erroneously teach in seminaries and become pastors and priests. But there is one thing they can never do, no not ever—they can never grow the beard! The beard is clearly and overtly male! But shamefully, woe-men, in pursuit of feminization, accommodate the woman’s inability and cut it off!
I am humored by men’s perception that today’s trend of a boy, or even a man, wearing an earring is an unacceptable departure from masculinity and a move toward femininity. Yet those very men who share these remarks and would not follow their example are often clean-shaven like the appearance of a woman. Actually, men have been desensitized to the more extreme—yet now accepted—marked change in appearance through the feministic removal of the man’s beard. In times past it would have been an unthinkable shame for a man to shave his beard. In fact, the removal of a man’s beard was so offensive that some crimes were punishable by its humiliating removal. King David would not even allow his partially shaven men to return until their beards returned (2 Samuel l0:1–5). Where has the beardless stigma gone? It was removed by Satan and fallen worldly man as men accepted feminization and rejected God’s image.
Shaving a man’s beard off is a far greater and more destructive departure from masculinity than any earring in one’s ear. There are no specific scriptures denouncing wearing an earring; but there are numerous specific scripture’s directly denouncing shaving the beard (Leviticus 19:27, 21:5–6)! “In the beginning man created God in His own image!” No! It is time for men to accept the image God made a man to be, returning back to “in the beginning God,” when a man had a beard!
And men, let’s get honest about this passage: “You shall not round off the side-growth of your heads, nor harm the edges of your beard. You shall not . . . make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am Yahweh” (Leviticus 19:27-28). It is hypocritical for anyone to cite this scripture concerning tattoos to show their wrong, and then selectively ignore or dismiss the companion instruction that a man is not to shave his beard. If you are going to say that tattoos are wrong, then you have to equally say that shaving one’s beard is wrong.
It is time for men to return to the image of God that the Creator shared with them and put away their idolatry of fashioning an image of the created, the woman. It is time for men to cease being woe-men!