Rashiרש״י

English

נעשה אדם WE WILL MAKE MAN — The meekness of the Holy One, blessed be He, they (the Rabbis) learned from here: because the man is in the likeness of the angels and they might envy him, therefore He took counsel with them (Midrash Tanchuma, Shemot 18 and see Genesis Rabbah 8). And when He judges the kings He likewise consults His heavenly council, for thus we find in the case of Ahab to whom Micha said, (1 Kings 22:19) “I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right hand and on His left.” Has God, then, a right hand and a left hand? But it means that some stood on the right side to plead in favour of the accused and others stood on the left side to accuse; and similarly we read (Daniel 4:14), “the matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the sentence by the word of the holy ones”, — here, also, He consulted His heavenly council and asked permission of them, saying to them: “There are in the heavens beings after My likeness; if there will not be on earth also beings after My likeness, there will be envy among the beings that I have created” (Sanhedrin 38b).

M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, 1929–34 · silbermann

Hebrew / Aramaic

Rashi on Gen 1:26, s.v. נעשה אדם (first comment) · silbermann

Notes

⚠ Anchor note: this is a comment on Gen 1:26, not on Gen 1:1–5. It is on the daf under the second clause of the anchor rule — it argues the same philological question the Elohim of Gen 1:1 raises, whether a plural form of speech about God implies a plurality in God — and is anchored on Gen 1:2 beside that material. Rashi takes the angel reading as the plain sense and gives it a motive: anvetanuto shel ha-Qadosh barukh Hu, the humility of the Holy One, learned from this verse. Because the human is in the likeness of the angels and they might be envious, he took counsel with them; and this is his habit, for Micaiah saw the LORD on his throne with all the host of heaven standing to his right and his left (1 Kgs 22:19), which cannot be a right and a left but is a court, some arguing for acquittal and some for guilt, and Daniel's decree of the watchers is the same court. The word he uses for it is pamalya shel ma'alah, the household above, from the Latin familia — so that the Latin bench's senatus and the rabbinic bench's imperial household are the same borrowed picture of a court, used to opposite ends. That God natal reshut, took leave, from his own retinue is the strongest form of the reading anywhere on this daf, and Rashi will spend his second comment defending it against the obvious objection.

Threads

• → cites · Babylonian Talmud
  Rashi's first comment is the Bavli's story turned into a doctrine of God, and he ends by quoting it: 'there are in the heavens beings after my likeness; if there will not be on earth also beings after my likeness, there will be envy among the beings that I have created.' What the daf leaves as a narrative — the angels object, they are burnt — Rashi makes a habit: this is how God judges kings too, as Micaiah saw, and as Daniel's decree of the watchers shows. The word for the court is pamalya shel ma'alah, from the Latin familia.
• ← parallel · Abraham ibn Ezra
  The two great northern and southern commentators arrive at the same hearer by different routes and with different tempers. Rashi gets to the angels from the humility of God and the court of 1 Kgs 22, and has to defend the reading against the minim in his next comment. Ibn Ezra gets to them by elimination: the earth and the waters brought forth the plants and the animals, and at the human God says we shall occupy ourselves with him and not they. No court, no humility, no polemic, and no acknowledgement that anybody reads the verse otherwise.