GEN66 … Rashi, the 11th-century scholar, comments on [this verse] that whatever dominion we have is conditional.  Where Genesis says that God planned to create humans “in our image” and to “let them rule over (yir’du) the rest of Creation, Rashi interprets, “If they merit, let them rule (rodeh); if not let them fall (yarud).”  A century later, Maimonides (Moreh Nevukhim 3:13) would say of Genesis that “dominion” is descriptive of a capacity in human nature, rather than prescriptive of the human role in the universe.  We do not have an unconditional mandate to dominate. AGTJL 319-21