Rashiרש״י

English

נעשה אדם WE WILL MAKE MAN — Although they did not assist Him in forming him (the man) and although this use of the plural may give the heretics an occasion to rebel (i. e. to argue in favour of their own views), yet the verse does not refrain from teaching proper conduct and the virtue of humbleness, namely, that the greater should consult, and take permission from the smaller; for had it been written, “I shall make man”, we could not, then, have learned that He spoke to His judicial council but to Himself. And as a refutation of the heretics it is written immediately after this verse “And God created the man”, and it is not written “and they created” (Genesis Rabbah 8:9)

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

Hebrew / Aramaic

Rashi on Gen 1:26, s.v. נעשה אדם (second 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. The objection and the answer, in a hundred words, and it is the whole of this crux compressed. The objection: the angels did not help, and the plural gives the minim room to rebel. The answer is in three parts. Scripture did not refrain, because the point was to teach derekh eretz and the measure of humility, that the great should consult and take leave of the lesser. Had it written e'eseh adam, we should not have learned that he speaks with his court but only with himself — which is Ambrose's non dicit faciam, sed faciamus at Milan, the identical grammatical observation put to the identical use of ruling out a soliloquy, and to the opposite conclusion about who is being addressed. And the refutation of the minim was written beside it: va-yivra et ha-adam, and he did not write va-yivre'u, which is R. Simlai's rule and answer from Bereshit Rabbah 8:9. Rashi at Troyes about 1090 is thus doing openly what no Latin witness on this daf does: he names the risk the verse carries, weighs it against what the verse teaches, and decides that the teaching is worth the opening. Whether the minim he has in mind are the Christians of northern France is not said here and is not needed: the grammatical opening is the same one Abelard will exploit at the Paraclete forty years later.

Threads

• ← parallel · Ambrose
  The same grammatical fact, the same use made of it, and opposite conclusions about the hearer. Ambrose: 'Cui dicit? Non sibi utique, quia non dicit, faciam, sed faciamus' — he cannot be speaking to himself, because the verb is not singular. Rashi: 'had it written e'eseh adam, we should not have learned that he speaks with his court but with himself.' Both rule out the soliloquy from the form of the verb; Ambrose concludes that the hearer is the Son, Rashi that it is the household above. Milan about 387 and Troyes about 1090, with no possible contact, reasoning identically to incompatible ends.
• ← contests · Peter Abelard
  The opening and the man who takes it, forty years apart and about two hundred miles. Rashi grants that na'aseh gives the minim room to rebel, and keeps it anyway for the sake of the lesson in humility, writing the refutation beside it: va-yivra and not va-yivre'u. Abelard walks into precisely that opening — 'dicant Judaei si possunt, vel nobiscum fateantur in una Divinitatis essentia pluralitatem personarum' — and takes Rashi's own refutation, the singular of v. 27, as the second half of his proof rather than as an answer to it. Neither has read the other and the argument fits together exactly.
• → cites · Bereshit Rabbah
  Rashi ends the second comment with R. Simlai's answer verbatim in Hebrew — 'and the refutation of the minim he wrote beside it, va-yivra et ha-adam, and he did not write va-yivre'u' — and with it he takes over the midrash's whole posture: name the risk, keep the verse, point to the answer alongside. The one thing he does not take over is R. Simlai's caution. Where the midrash has the disciples object that the minim were pushed off with a reed, Rashi lets the grammatical answer stand as the answer.