B'tzelem Elohim - In God's Image
Sermon, October 8, 2004
Rabbi Bruce Kadden

This Shabbat we begin reading from the book of Genesis with the story of creation.  It is a wonderful story with many important lessons.  Perhaps its most important teaching is found toward the end of the first chapter, on the sixth day of creation. 

It reads:  “And God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness.  And they shall rule the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky, and the cattle and the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on the earth.  And God created humankind in God’s image, in the image of God, God created humankind, male and female God created them.”

These verses raise a number of important questions.  First of all, to whom is God speaking when saying “Let us make humankind?”  Some have suggested that God was speaking to the animals that had already been created, and saying:  Let us make a creature that is in some ways like you –needing to eat, sleep, and mate—and in some ways like Me—being creative, compassionate, and acting with a sense of morality.

Others have suggested that God was speaking to the angels.  According to one midrash God asked the angels about creating humankind.  The angel of mercy argued for the creation because human beings will show mercy toward each other.  However, the angel of truth opposed the creation claiming that human beings would often lie.

Then the angel of righteousness responded in favor of the creation because of the righteous deeds human beings would do.  But the angel of peace argued that human beings would argue and fight with each other.

While the angels continued to argue back and forth, God created humankind and then said to the angels:  “Stop arguing.  I have already created humankind!”

Other scholars have pointed out that the use of the plural may be similar to the “royal we” when the plural is used, but an individual is meant.

But the most intriguing parts of these verses are the phrases:  “in our image, after our likeness.”  What does it mean to be created in God’s image? 

It goes without saying that it cannot mean that we are a physical image of God.  For Judaism clearly teaches that God is not a physical being and should never be represented as a physical image.  So if being created in God’s image does not mean a physical image, what kind of image does it mean?

Rabbi Gunther Plaut observes that these “words reflect the Torah’s abiding wonder over” the “special stature in creation” for human beings, particularly our “unique intellectual capacity, which bears the imprint of the Creator.”  No other creature even approaches our ability to think and reason, to draw conclusions and to pursue intellectual interests.  God created us with capacity to think, to use our minds.  We can use our minds for good, to make the world a better place.  Or we can use our minds for evil.

The capacity to choose how we use our intellectual ability reflects the second way that we are created in God’s image:  our moral capability.  This week’s Torah portion also contains the story of Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden.  After eating from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve open their eyes, realize they are naked, and make clothes to cover themselves. 

One of the interpretations of this story is that eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge symbolizes our ability to make moral decisions, to know right from wrong.  This is another quality that distinguishes us from animals, and makes us like God.  The rabbis taught, “Just as God is merciful, we, too, should be merciful; and just as God is just, we too should be just.” 

Finally, being created in God’s image means that we have the capacity to be holy, like God.  In Leviticus, God says, “You shall be holy, for I, Adonai your God, am holy.”  No other creature has the ability to be holy.  No other being can, by actions, set oneself apart from others, can choose to be different.  That is what it means to be created in God’s image.

The biblical scholar Nahum Sarna, in his commentary on the book of Genesis, offers another perspective on being created in God’s image.  He suggests that this concept should be understood in the light of Mesopotamian and Egyptian texts which speak of the ruling monarch as “the image” or “the likeness” of a god. 

What a contrast!  In these Middle Eastern cultures, the king is said to be in the image of a god.  But in Genesis all of humankind is created in God’s image.  Every human being is created in the image of the Divine.  This teaching means that we are all of infinite worth and that, for example, killing another human being is, in a sense, a form of deicide. 

Dr. Sarna also points out that in Assyria, the various gods were often depicted by their symbols. For example, Shamash the sun god was represented by the sun. These symbols were called the image of the god.  In Genesis, it is we human beings who are the image of God, “the symbol of God’s presence on earth.” 

This concept, too, has important implications.  It means that whatever we do reflects on God.  Jewish tradition speaks of actions that are particularly good as kiddush hashem, sanctifying God’s name, and those that are particularly awful as chillul hashem, desecrating God’s name.  Each of us is God’s image. 

The Psalmist, when experiencing the magnificence of creation, the heaven and moon and stars, exclaimed, “What is humankind, that You are mindful, human beings, that you pay attention to them?”  You have made them little lower than divine” (8:5-6).  We are, indeed, a little less than divine.  Created in God’s image, we have unique intellectual abilities which allow us to think and reason.  We also have unique moral abilities which allow us to choose right from wrong.  And finally, we have the ability to be holy. 

To be created in God’s image is a blessing and a challenge.  It is a blessing bestowed on no other being, and it is therefore a profound challenge to live up to the expectations.  May God help us to fulfill our potential of being created in God’s image.

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