Radah is the Hebrew verb for dominion-as-stewardship, given to humans together at the moment of creation. Genesis 1:26 introduces the term: "Let us make humanity in our image, after our likeness, that they may have dominion (radah) over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, and over all the earth." Genesis 1:28 confirms it: "Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion (radah)..." The grammar is plural. Both image-bearers, given the same charge, ruling creation together as HaShem's representatives.

This is the first dominion mandate in Scripture, and it is not what the church often does with the word. Radah is not domination. It is responsibility. Image-bearers are stewards over a creation that belongs to HaShem, exercising authority on His behalf. The verb appears later in contexts that make this clear: Leviticus 25:43 forbids ruling (radah) a fellow Israelite "with harshness." Psalm 72:8 prays that the king's righteous radah will extend from sea to sea, but the surrounding verses define righteous rule as defending the poor and crushing the oppressor. Ezekiel 34:4 condemns shepherds who rule (radah) with force and cruelty rather than care. The Hebrew word carries the weight of representation: you rule on behalf of someone, accountable to that someone, not on your own authority.

Radah is the verb that should anchor every Christian conversation about authority in marriage, in the church, in human relationships. It does not. The conversation has been derailed by a different verb that was never the design: mashal. Mashal appears in Genesis 3:16 as Fall consequence ("he shall mashal over you"), where the dynamic shifts from mutual radah-stewardship to one-sided power-over. The wound is the substitution of mashal for radah. The gospel's job is to undo it: to return human relationships to the radah pattern that Genesis 1 established and Yeshua, who washed feet and absorbed the cross, embodied perfectly.