Meshech Chochmah: Tzelem Elokim

G-d said, ‘Let us make Man in Our image, after Our likeness.’ (1,26)

Commenting on this pasuk, the Midrash says: (Bereshis Rabbi 8:3)

With whom was He consulting? R’ Ami says, He was consulting with His heart. This may be compared to a king who commissioned an architect to build a palace for him. When he finally saw it, he was displeased. With whom will he be angry? Will it not be with the architect? Thus does the pasuk state (Bereshis 6,6) ‘HaShem regretted having made Man on earth, and He was sad towards His heart.’

The Midrash informs us that Hashem’s response upon surveying the moral decline of man in the generation of the flood, of ‘being sad toward His heart,’ was based on the fact that it was His heart with Whom He originally consulted before creating Man in His likeness.

What is the meaning of Hashem ‘consulting with His heart’? Moreover, if He was actually consulting with His own heart, why does He use the plural form ‘Let us make Man’?

The Meshech Chochmah explains. The faculty of ‘Tzelem Elokim – the Likeness of G-d’ refers to Man’s ability to choose based on his own free will, with his decisions not being entirely dictated either by his nature or by Hashem’s command. The Name ‘Elokim’ denotes Hashem as the Source of all power. In granting Man the capacity to defy Him, Hashem was essentially ‘diminishing’ His own power, granting a ‘likeness’ of it – ‘Tzelem Elokim’ – to Man. Hence, Hashem ‘consulted with His heart,’ referring to His infinite power, before endowing Man with this capacity.

Rashi informs us that the term ‘Elokim,’ as with all terms that denote power, is typically used in the plural form, even when referring to only one source of that power. Therefore, since the faculty which Hashem was about to bestow upon Man involved granting him some of His own power, so to speak, the plural form is used – ‘Let us make Man.’

This G-d-given faculty of free will defines Man, and hence, in the Midrash’s allegory, it is the ‘architect’ that was commissioned to design him. Thus, when Man led himself into a state of total moral decline, the pasuk states that Hashem was ‘sad toward His heart’ – the heart with whom He ‘consulted’ before granting Man this power which he had proceeded to abuse.