Verse 27 describes the action following the command given in verse 26.

So God created man in his own image: see verse 26. The command in verse 26 has the verb made, and here in verse 27 the verb is created; however, no significance is attached to this difference. In the image of God he created him repeats the previous clause, giving poetic emphasis to the first statement. For some languages this repetition or parallelism is stylistically inappropriate.

Male and female here replaces the often used “each according to its kind.” In Hebrew as in English and many other languages, male and female is a fixed word pair that always occurs in that order. He created them adds no new information but calls attention again to God having created human beings.

In translating male and female translators in some languages will have to make a decision whether they refer to one man and one woman or to plural men and plural women. This is because in many languages the usual terms for male and female are “man” and “woman,” and the plural them may be either just one of each or more than one of each. Male and female are actually singular forms in Hebrew, but the expression refers to the two kinds of human beings in verse 26. So “he created them male and female” should probably be taken to mean here that God created some human beings as men or males and some as women or females. We may also say, for instance, “He created them, some as men and some as women,” or “He created people, both the man kind and the woman kind.” The story in chapter 2 tells of God creating one man and one woman, and the Hebrew here can also be read that way.

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Genesis. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .