ייִדישער מחשבֿה אויף קהלת 2:12

When we assert that Scripture teaches that God rules this world through angels, we mean such angels as are identical with the Intelligences. In some passages the plural is used of God, e.g., “Let us make man in our image” (Gen. 1:26); “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language” (ibid. 11:7). Our Sages explain this in the following manner: God, as it were, does nothing without contemplating the host above. I wonder at the expression “contemplating,” which is the very expression used by Plato: God, as it were, “contemplates the world of ideals, and thus produces the existing beings.” In other passages our Sages expressed it more decidedly: “God does nothing without consulting the host above” (the word familia, used in the original, is a Greek noun, and signifies “host”). On the words, “what they have already made” (Eccles. 2:12), the following remark is made in Bereshit Rabba and in Midrash Koheleth: “It is not said ‘what He has made,’ but ‘what they have made’; hence we infer that He, as it were, with His court, have agreed upon the form of each of the limbs of man before placing it in its position, as it is said, ‘He hath made thee and established thee’” (Deut. 32:6). In Bereshit Rabba (chap. li.) it is also stated, that wherever the term “and the Lord” occurred in Scripture, the Lord with His court is to be understood.