The Mekhilta presents a second comparison between human artisans and the divine Creator — this time focusing on the problem of models. When a mortal craftsman is asked to make a figure of someone's father, he has a reasonable request: "Let your father come and pose for me, or bring me a likeness of him, and I will do so." The artisan needs a reference. He cannot create a resemblance from nothing.
Not so the Holy One Blessed be He. God gives a man a son from a single drop of water — and that son emerges bearing the likeness of his father. No model was posed. No portrait was consulted. No reference image was provided. From a formless droplet, God sculpts a face that mirrors another face, a body that echoes another body, features that trace back through generations.
The miracle is so commonplace that we forget to marvel at it. Every child born with its father's eyes or its mother's smile is a masterwork produced without a sitting, without a sketch, without any of the tools that human artists consider essential. God works from no model because He is the source of all models.
This teaching from the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael (Tractate Shirah 8:19) finds the miraculous hidden inside the ordinary. We are surrounded by portraits that no human artist could produce — living, breathing, walking replicas of people who may no longer be alive. Every birth is proof that God is an artist beyond all artists.