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lovingkindness, the dignity of
the individual and the sanctity
of life.
This same principle,
that Genesis 1 is a polemic,
part of an argument with a
background, is essential to
understanding the idea that
God created humanity “in His
image, after His likeness.” This
language would not have been
unfamiliar to the first readers of
the Torah. It was one they knew
well. It was commonplace in the
first civilizations, Mesopotamia
and ancient Egypt, where certain
people were said to be in the
image of God. They were the
kings of the Mesopotamian city-
states and the pharaohs of Egypt.
Nothing could have been more
radical than to say that not just
kings and rulers appear in God’s
image. We all do. Even today the
idea is daring: how much more
so in an age of absolute rulers
with absolute power.
Understood thus, Genesis
1:26-27 is not so much a
metaphysical statement about
the nature of the human
person as it is a political
protest against the very basis
of hierarchical, class- or caste-
based societies whether in
ancient or modern times. That
is what makes it the most
incendiary idea in the Torah.
In some fundamental sense,
we are all equal in dignity and
ultimate worth, for we are all in
God’s image, regardless of color,
culture or creed.
A similar idea appears later
in the Torah, in relation to
the Jewish people, when God
invited them to become a
kingdom of priests and a holy
nation (Ex. 19:6). All nations in
the ancient world had priests,
but none was “a kingdom of
priests.
” All religions have holy
individuals — but none claim
that every one of their members
is holy. This, too, took time to
materialize.
During the entire biblical
era there were hierarchies.
There were priests and high
priests, a holy elite. But after
the destruction of the Second
Temple, every prayer became a
sacrifice, every leader of prayer
a priest, and every synagogue
a fragment of the Temple. A
profound egalitarianism is at
work just below the surface of
the Torah, and the rabbis knew
it and lived it.
A LIMITED DOMINION
A second idea is contained in
the phrase, “so that they may
rule over the fish in the sea and
the birds in the sky.
” Note that
there is no suggestion that any-
one has the right to have domin-
ion over any other human being.
In Paradise Lost, Milton, like
the Midrash, states that this was
the sin of Nimrod, the first great
ruler of Assyria and by implica-
tion the builder of the Tower of
Babel (see Gen. 10:8-11). Milton
writes that when Adam was told
that Nimrod would “arrogate
dominion undeserved,
” he was
horrified:
O execrable son so to aspire
Above his Brethren, to himself
assuming
Authority usurped, from God
not given:
He gave us only over beast,
fish, fowl
Dominion absolute; that right
we hold
By his donation; but man over
men
He made not lord; such title to
himself
Reserving, human left from
human free.
Paradise Lost, Book 12:64-71
To question the right of
humans to rule over other
humans without their consent
was at that time utterly unthink-
able. All advanced societies were
like this. How could they be
otherwise? Was this not the very
structure of the universe? Did
the sun not rule the day? Did
the moon not rule the night?
Was there not a hierarchy of the
gods in heaven itself?
Already implicit here is the
deep ambivalence the Torah
would ultimately show toward
the very institution of kingship,
the rule of “man over men.
”
THE POWER TO BE FREE
The third implication lies in
the sheer paradox of God
saying, “Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness.
”
We sometimes forget, when
reading these words, that in
Judaism God has no image or
likeness. To make an image of
God is to transgress the second
of the Ten Commandments
and to be guilty of idolatry.
Moses emphasized that at the
Revelation at Sinai, “You saw
no likeness, you only heard the
sound of words.
” (Deut. 4:12)
God has no image because He
is not physical. He transcends
the physical universe because He
created it. Therefore, He is free,
unconstrained by the laws of
matter. That is what God means
when He tells Moses that His
name is “I will be what I will
be” (Ex. 3:14), and later when,
after the sin of the Golden Calf,
He tells him, “I will have mercy
on whom I will have mercy.
”
God is free, and by making us in
His image, He gave us also the
power to be free.
This, as the Torah makes
clear, was God’s most fateful
gift. Given freedom, humans
misuse it. Adam and Eve
disobey God’s command. Cain
murders Abel. By the end of the
parshah we find ourselves in
the world about to be destroyed
by the Flood, for it is filled with
violence to the point where God
regretted He had ever created
humanity.
This is the central drama
of Tanach and of Judaism as a
whole. Will we use our freedom
to respect order or misuse it to
create chaos? Will we honor or
dishonor the image of God that
lives within the human heart
and mind?
These are not only ancient
questions. They are as alive
today as ever they were in the
past. The question raised by
serious thinkers — ever since
Nietzsche argued in favor of
abandoning both God and
the Judeo-Christian ethic — is
whether justice, human rights
and the unconditional dignity of
the human person are capable
of surviving on secular grounds
alone? Nietzsche himself
thought not.
In 2008, Yale philosopher
Nicholas Woltersdorff published
a magisterial work arguing that
our Western concept of justice
rests on the belief that “all of
us have great and equal worth:
the worth of being made in the
image of God and of being loved
redemptively by God.
”
There is, he insists, no secular
rationale on which a similar
framework of justice can be
built. That is surely what John F.
Kennedy meant in his inaugural
address when he spoke of the
“revolutionary beliefs for which
our forebears fought,
” that “the
rights of man come not from the
generosity of the state, but from
the hand of God.
”
Momentous ideas made the
West what it is, ideas like human
rights, the abolition of slavery,
the equal worth of all, and
justice based on the principle
that right is sovereign over
might. All of these ultimately
derived from the statement in
the first chapter of the Torah
that we are made in God’s image
and likeness.
No other text has had a
greater influence on moral
thought, nor has any other
civilization ever held a higher
vision of what we are called on
to be.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (1948-
2020) was a global religious leader,
philosopher, the author of more
than 25 books and moral voice
for our time. His series of essays
on the weekly Torah portion,
entitled “Covenant & Conversation”
will continue to be shared and
distributed around the world.