Xenophanes (c. 570 – c. 475 BCE)
God is one, supreme among gods and men, and not like mortals in body or in mind.
...Instead of yearning to
rise from the low to above, from earth to heaven, from the images and shadows
of reality to the plenitude of a lofty existence, to a pure ontic overflow
(like the aspiration of the Platonist to the ideas, or the Neoplatonists to
higher worlds that emanate from the absolutely unknowable and transcendent one),
the Halakhah occupies itself with the lower realms. When halakhic man pines for God, he does not
venture to rise up to him, but rather strives to bring down His divine presence
into the midst of our concrete world ...
Homo religiosus, who thirst for the living God, demolishes the bounds of this-worldliness, transforms himself into pure spirit, breaks through all barriers, and ascends on high. For him the approach to God consists in a leap for the empirical and concrete into the transcendent and the mysterious. Not so for halakhic man! When his soul yearns for God, he immerses himself in reality, plunges, with his entire being, into the very midst of concrete existence, and petitions God to descend upon the mountain and to dwell within our reality, with all its laws and principles. Homo religiosus ascends to God; God, however, descends to halakhic man. The latter desires not to transform finitude into infinity but rather infinity into finitude. He brings down the divine presence into a sanctuary bounded by twenty boards, holiness into a world situated within the realms of concrete reality, the Absolute into the relative and conditional... Holiness, according to the outlook of Halakhah, denotes the appearance of a mysterious transcendence into the midst of our concrete world, the “descent” of God, whom no thought can grasp, onto Mount Sinai, the bending down of a hidden and concealed world and lowering it onto the face of reality.
The proper meaning of the word "let us make" is such:
It has been shown that God only created ex nihilo on
the first day of creation; He henceforth 'formed' and
'made' from that initial matter. Just like He gave the
water the ability to support aquatic life and the land to
sprout animal life, as it says 'The land shall bring forth',
so does it say by Man, "let us make." This means, the
land and I [God] will make Man, in the sense that his
body arises from earthly matter. As it says 'Then
Hashem God formed man of the dust of the ground'.
And He, may His Name be blessed, gave Man a lofty
spirit as it says 'and man became a living soul'.
Abarbanel on the Torah, Bereishit Ch. 1
Hashem therefore said I and the land will both make
Man, part intellect and part material. It likewise says
"in our zelem", for Man is in the "zelem" of both God
and matter, but in different respects. For as much as a
person is bound to his body, he will be in the zelem of
matter. Inasmuch as he is bound to his intellect, comprehending
intellectual concepts, he is in the zelem of
God.
וּקְוֻצּוֹתָיו רְסִיסֵי לַיְלָה
“And God passed before him and proclaimed...” Rabbi Yochanan said: Were it not written in the text, it would be impossible for us to say such a thing; this verse teaches us that God enwrapped Himself like the sheliach tzibbur (prayer leader) of a congregation and showed Moshe the order of prayer. He said to him: Whenever Israel sin, let them carry out this service before Me, and I will forgive them. (Rosh Hashana 17b)