Immersion in אֶחָד

Well, how did it go this morning? How much Hebrew can one immerse the children in? Not too much at least not for me. We did our five minute lesson on One and they all learned, practiced and sang the shema with me. words alone - tune to la la la and then put it all together. I know we got through this with some success - I have never heard this group sing so loud.

As usual when looking at my illustration of 'One', all heads gathered close so I had to ask for my space back to spread out the map of Genesis 1. It was 4 feet by 2 feet. The colors are many and I think they recognized some of the patterns in the refrains on the page, but I did not read anything in sequence.

There was no one there who remembered the first lesson from Spring 2008 so I repeated it quickly. Then I pointed out the uses of and God said - I found only 9 but I was sure there were 10. The computer counts 10 so there must be 10. Where is the tenth? (One of them is in verse 28 and the computer is counting only the word 'and he said'.) We read together the refrains and counted thus up to 7.  I think we will have a lesson on every number, so all this was by way of introduction.

Have you noticed this?

ויאמר אלהים נעשה אדם בצלמנו כדמותנו
And God said - let us make a human in our image after our likeness 

וירדו בדגת הים ובעוף השמים
to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven etc

ויברא אלהים את־האדם בצלמו
So God created the human in his image

בצלם אלהים ברא אתו
In the image of God he created it
זכר ונקבה ברא אתם
male and female he created them

God says - let's make the human in our image according to our likeness
But then God creates the human in his image

What's missing? In a poem where repetition is a pattern closely followed, this 'after our likeness' is not repeated.

Likeness without image is used in Genesis 5 - How are we to understand the missing words? The use of likeness with respect to the human is not taken up again till the visions of Ezekiel.