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Chapter 2 THE CREATION OF HUMANITY GENESIS 1:26–31 (A.)26 And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.”27 And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them.28 God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth.”29 God said, “See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food.30 And to all the animals on land, to all the birds of the sky, and to everything that creeps on earth, in which there is the breath of life, [I give] all the green plants for food.31 And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (JPS TANAKH) (B.)26 God said: Let us make humankind, in our image, according to our likeness! Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the heavens, animals, all the earth, and all the crawling things that crawl about upon the earth!27 God created humankind in his image, in the image of God did he create it, male and female did he create them. (Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses) 40 Creating Pluralism Although there are two creation stories in the Book of Genesis, we begin with the narrative that has pride of place, chapter 1. In these six verses, which focus on the latter part of the sixth day of creation, the Torah treats issues of theology, anthropology, and ecology. Our commentators begin their exploration of these issues by seizing upon the most salient difference between this act of creation and those that preceded it. God’s creation begins as a solo act. Although the word God in this chapter has a plural suffix (the im ending of Elohim), its predicates are all in the singular. This grammatical curiosity might be a literary hint that all those gods in the ancient Near-Eastern pantheons have now been consolidated under the generic and grammatically singular term Elohim. If so, then the introduction of plurality in verse 26, “Let us make adam,” is all the more bizarre. 1. Rabbi Joshua said in the name of Rabbi Levi: God consulted with the work of the heavens and the earth. (Genesis Rabbah, Rabbinic compilation edited by 5th century, Land of Israel) Rabbi Levi’s comment has the advantage of remaining within the confines of our story to supply an answer for the mystery of the plural. God consulted all that He had created up until that moment. Not only does Rabbi Levi’s intuition resonate with contemporary scientific accounts and environmentalist sensibilities, but it is also sensitive to the rhetoric of our chapter. The God of creation, at least in the opening chapter of the Torah, is not a commanding God. God’s first utterance, grammatically, is less a command than an enthusiastic invitation: “Let there be light,” as opposed to “Shine!” or “Illuminate!” (Grammarians refer to this tense of persuasion as the jussive, or in our verse, since it is first person rather than third person, the cohortative.) Everett Fox punctuates our verse with an exclamation point. The NJPS translation , more in keeping with the Hebrew, uses a softer point. The grammar of creation suggests the willing acceptance of a Divine invitation.1 It can be argued, of course, that God’s invitation is far more commanding than any human imperative. But the same might be true for any C.E.O. The medieval commentator Rashi does not cite this Rabbinic comment, but he does tell us we should learn humility from this verse since even God consults with His subordinates. For Rabbi Levi, human humility isn’t only a reflection of God’s humility, but derives from our essential commonalities with the rest of creation. After all, humans and other land animals share the sixth day as a birthday. THE CREATION OF HUMANITY 41 2. Everything formed on a given day was incorporated into the things...

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