60 | OCTOBER 12 • 2023 J
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here are words that 
change the world, none 
more so than two sen-
tences that appear in the first 
chapter of the Torah: “Then 
God said, ‘Let us make man-
kind in our image, in our like-
ness, so that they may rule over 
the fish in the sea and the birds 
in the sky, over the livestock and 
all the wild animals, and over 
all the creatures 
that move along 
the ground.
’ So 
God created man-
kind in His own 
image, in the 
image of God 
He created them; 
male and female 
He created them.
” Gen. 1:26-27
The idea set forth here is per-
haps the most transformative in 
the entire history of moral and 
political thought. It is the basis 
of the civilization of the West 
with its unique emphasis on the 
individual and on equality. It lies 
behind Thomas Jefferson’s words 
in the American Declaration of 
Independence, “We hold these 
truths to be self-evident, that all 
men are created equal [and] are 

endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights …
” 
These truths are any-
thing but self-evident. They 
would have been regarded 
as absurd by Plato, who held 
that society should be based 
on the myth that humans are 
divided into people of gold, 
silver and bronze and it is this 
that determines their status in 
society. Aristotle believed that 
some are born to rule and others 
to be ruled.
Revolutionary utterances 
do not work their magic over-
night. As Rambam explained 
in The Guide for the Perplexed, 
it takes people a long time to 
change. The Torah functions 
in the medium of time. It did 
not abolish slavery, but it set in 
motion a series of developments 
— most notably Shabbat, when 
all hierarchies of power were 
suspended and slaves had a day 
a week of freedom — that were 
bound to lead to its abolition in 
the course of time.
People are slow to under-
stand the implications of ideas. 
Thomas Jefferson, champion 
of equality, was a slave-owner. 

Slavery was not abolished in the 
United States until the 1860s 
and not without a civil war. And 
as Abraham Lincoln pointed 
out, slavery’s defenders as well as 
its critics cited the Bible in their 
cause. But eventually people 
change, and they do so because 
of the power of ideas planted 
long ago in the Western mind.

A NEW WAY OF THINKING
What exactly is being said in the 
first chapter of the Torah?
The first thing to note is that 
it is not a stand-alone utterance, 
an account without a context. 
It is, in fact, a polemic, a pro-
test, against a certain way of 
understanding the universe. In 
all ancient myth the world was 
explained in terms of battles of 
the gods in their struggle for 
dominance. The Torah dismiss-
es this way of thinking totally 
and utterly. God speaks and the 
universe comes into being. This, 
according to the great 19th- 
century sociologist Max Weber, 
was the end of myth and the 
birth of Western rationalism.
More significantly, it created 
a new way of thinking about 

the universe. Central to both 
the ancient world of myth and 
the modern world of science is 
the idea of power, force, ener-
gy. That is what is significantly 
absent from Genesis 1. God 
says, “Let there be,
” and there 
is. There is nothing here about 
power, resistance, conquest 
or the play of forces. Instead, 
the key word of the narrative, 
appearing seven times, is utterly 
unexpected. It is the word tov, 
good.
Tov is a moral word. The 
Torah in Genesis 1 is telling 
us something radical. The 
reality to which Torah is a 
guide (the word “Torah” itself 
means guide, instruction, law) 
is moral and ethical. The ques-
tion Genesis seeks to answer is 
not “How did the universe come 
into being?” but “How then shall 
we live?” This is the Torah’s most 
significant paradigm-shift. 
The universe that God 
made and we inhabit is not 
about power or dominance 
but about tov and ra, good and 
evil. For the first time, religion 
was ethicized. God cares about 
justice, compassion, faithfulness, 

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

The Genesis of Justice

