“This is the book of the descendants of Adam, on the day that God created man, in the likeness of God He made him” (Genesis 5:1). “This is the book of the descendants of Adam.” Rabbi Yehoshua Rabba began: “Woe, those who go deep from the Lord to conceal counsel, and their actions are in the dark, and they say: who sees us and who knows of us?” (Isaiah 29:15). This is analogous to an architect who designed a city – its chambers, sewers, and cisterns.
Sometime later, he became a tax collector. The residents of the city would conceal themselves from him in the chambers and in the cisterns. He said to them: It is I who built the cisterns! How can you conceal yourselves in them?
So, “Woe, those who go deep from the Lord to conceal counsel, and their actions are in the dark.” “In your contrariness you assert that the potter is just like the clay” (Isaiah 29:16) – they liken the product to the craftsman, the plant to the planter. “Can a product say of its maker: ‘He did not make me,’ or the craft say of its craftsman: ‘He does not understand’?” (Isaiah 29:16). “Behold, in just a short while Lebanon1A forest of mighty, but barren, cedars. will be transformed into farmland” (Isaiah 29:17) – into a royal palace;2God will aggrandize the meek.
This will disprove the assertion of the wicked that they can conceal their deeds from God, that He is indifferent to man’s actions. “and the farmland will be considered a forest” (Isaiah 29:17) – into forests of men. “On that day, the deaf will hear the words of a book” (Isaiah 29:18) – “this is the book of the descendants of Adam.”3God is the Creator of Adam and all mankind, so he surely knows their thoughts and deeds.