בראשית ברא אלוקים, let the “intellectuals” realize that all the words of our sages and their interpretations are true and accurate. This is what the Talmud (Shabbat 63) had in mind when it quoted Rav Kahane saying that he had studied the Talmud until the age of 18 and had not yet appreciated that although the laws of the Torah are derived from the text, none of the interpretations are such that they can uproot the plain meaning of the text. They are based on anomalies in the text, not on the text itself wherever the law derived from the Torah appears to conflict with the plain meaning of the text. One example is Genesis 2,4 where the word בהבראם, a most unusual construction, used by the sages to declare that the world was created “for the sake of, or with the help of אברהם,” (Bereshit Rabbah 12,9) seeing that the letters in that word are the same as the ones in the name אברהם, [though in a different sequence. Ed.] I shall list the explanations of earlier commentators of old, in order to demonstrate why I did not follow in their footsteps. Some scholars understand the first verse to mean that “at the beginning G’d created heaven and earth.” This is an erroneous explanation, seeing that water preceded the creation of heaven and earth as we know from verse 2 where “the spirit of G’d” is described as already “hovering over the surface of the water.” Moreover, the Torah did not write בראשונה, which would have been appropriate if it had wanted to tell us that heaven and earth preceded all other phenomena in the universe. The word בראשית is in a construct mode, as in Genesis 10,10 ותהי ראשית ממלכתו בבל “the mainstay of his kingdom was Babylon.” A construct mode like this cannot describe the commencement of something but refers to something already in existence. As to the scholars who understand the word as equivalent to the word תחלה in Hoseah 1,2 i.e. so that it would mean “at the beginning G’d created the heaven,” i.e. before He created heaven and earth there was chaos, darkness on the face of the water, etc., so that it emerges that water had been created first, this too is nonsense. How could the Torah refer to a state of the earth prior to creation of the heaven? The plain meaning of the text is, as occurs many times, that something may be mentioned first in one instance although elsewhere this same phenomenon is mentioned as having occurred at a later stage. In Genesis 9,18 we are told about the three sons of Noach who left the ark after the deluge being Shem, Cham and Yephet, and the Torah adds that Cham was the father of Canaan. Although the information about Canaan is quite out of place at this juncture, the fact that later on the Torah tells us that Noach cursed Canaan, makes it necessary to mention him here, as otherwise we would not have known who this Canaan was whom Noachh cursed in verse 25 of the same chapter. We have a similar situation in Genesis 35,22 where, although Reuven’s conduct with Yaakov’s concubine Bilhah is mentioned, Yaakov’s reaction is not mentioned until shortly before his death when he explains why Reuven had not been viewed by him as suitable to occupy the position normally accorded to a firstborn (Genesis 49,3-4). In 35,22 the Torah already tells us that Yaakov had heard about what Reuven had done. Had the Torah not done so, the reader would have been taken aback at Yaakov’s remonstrating with Reuven at this late stage. There are many such examples. Our entire paragraph here was written by Moses in order for us to understand what is written in the Ten Commandments concerning the reason why the Sabbath is holy, i.e. that it is a symbol reminding us of the fact that G’d created the universe in 6 days and rested on the seventh day. (Exodus 20,10) If anyone were to think that the universe as such had already existed then in the format that we see it now, the Torah corrects such thinking by continuing with

והארץ היתה, the earth had preceded and existed in a chaotic form, as elaborated on by the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 4,23) והנה ראיתי את הארץ והנה תהו ובוהו ואל השמים ואין אורם...ראיתי ואין אדם מעוף השמים ועד בהמה נדדו הלכו (Jeremiah 9,9)

This verse explains the meaning of “Tohu vavohu” in greater detail, i.e. that there was no kind of life on earth at that stage.

וחושך על פני תהום, this is a reference to the absence of light in the heaven.

ורוח אלוקים מרחפת (מנשבת) על פני המים, we had to be told that G’d’s wind was active at that stage, else verse 9 of this chapter in which G’d issues a directive for the waters to collect in a contiguous area would not make sense, as we could not have understood how the waters were made to assemble all in one area of the globe. We find the role of this רוח of G’d in Exodus 14,21 when it prepared the manifestation of the sea splitting to allow the Israelites to cross it safely and on dry land.

ויאמר אלוקים יהי אור, by means of this directive G’d meant to correct the fact that up until then everything was in complete darkness,

וירא אלוקים את האור, He looked at its appearance and it was good. The statement is similar to Yocheved saying ותרא אותו כי טוב, (Exodus 2,2) although he had been born three months prematurely, just as had Samuel. In practice, the fact that all his vital features including the nails of his toes and fingers and the hairs on his head had grown, gave her the feeling that he was “good,” i.e. a viable human being, so that she proceeded to hide him for three months because she knew that he was not premature in the sense of not being viable.

ויבדל אלוקים בין האור ובין החושך, He arranged for the day to be divided into 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night. The day commences with a period of light and concludes with a period of darkness. The reason is that the beginning of directives issued during the creative process commenced with the command: “let there be light.”

ויקרא אלוקים ליום אור, you may ask yourself what possible need there was for G’d to call this light “day” already at the time He created it; however this is the way Moses worded it when he wrote down the Torah. Whenever, in Scriptures, G’d is recorded as mentioning “day” and “night,” as for instance in Genesis 8,22, where He made the promise that “henceforth the alternating manifestations of day and night will not cease to occur regularly,” יום ולילה לא ישבותון, this is a reference to the original light created on the first day. G’d always called this “light” “night and day.” Similarly, every time in this chapter when we encounter the expression ויקרא אלוקים, as well as when we read in Numbers 13,15 ויקרא אלוקים להושע בן נון יהושע, whereas the same man as representative of the tribe of Ephrayim had been referred to as הושע only 7 verses earlier as הושע. This was the same man, who, previously, when he appeared in his position of Moses’ personal valet was already known as יהושע, (Exodus 24,13) It is customary among kings that when they appoint a person to a position of eminence to signal this by changing the name of such a person. One well known example of this is Pharaoh calling Joseph צפנת פנח upon appointing him as viceroy of Egypt (Genesis 41,45) Other such examples are found in Daniel 1,7, etc.

ולחשך קרא לילה, “whereas He had already named the darkness ‘night.’” Seeing that mention of light always precedes mention of darkness, the Torah first told us of the name G’d gave to “light.”

ויהי ערב ויהי בקר. It is noteworthy that the Torah here did not write ויהי לילה, ויהי יום, but it wrote ערב. This is the period when G’d made the light of the first day fade. The subsequent expression ויהי בקר refers to the morning after the night when dawn rose. At this point the first of the 6 “days” of G’d’s creative activity of which He spoke in the Ten Commandments had come to an end. After that the second “day” began and is introduced with the words ויאמר אלוקים יהי רקיע בתוך המים. The purpose of our verse here was not to tell us that that evening and morning were part of the same day. The verse was needed only to tell us how the 6 “days” are accounted for, i.e. that the morning completed the night, which was the end of that day and the beginning of the second day.

ויאמר אלוקים יהי רקיע, after the first day had been concluded with its morning, G’d issued a new directive.

רקיע, the word (noun) is a participle describing a creature such as עשיר which means the same as מעושר, “someone who has been equipped with wealth,” or the word חסיד, used to describe a pious individual. This noun is also a derivative from the word חסד, loving kindness, i.e. a חסיד is a creature equipped with this attribute of loving G’d. Now the universe was to be equipped with a horizon. Seeing that from the earth until the highest regions of the heaven there was an unbroken region filled with water, G’d now separated these waters in the “middle,” by making this firmament, expanse of atmosphere we call horizon. This רקיע appears as if stretched from east to west and from north to south effectively separating the “upper” layers of water from the “lower” ones. Seeing that G’d did not assign any specific function to the waters until the third “day” when He told the waters to congregate in a specific region so that the dry land beneath it should become visible, the expression “it was good,” is not mentioned in connection with the second day. This is compensated for on the third “day,” when this statement “it was good” appears twice in the Torah’s report. It appears after the waters complied with G’d’s directive, and after the earth, i.e. the dry land, produced the vegetation including fruit-bearing trees which G’d had commanded it to produce.

בין מים למים, so that half the waters would remain in the “upper” regions and half in the “lower” regions.

ויקרא אלוקים לרקיע שמים, as I have already explained previously, the rakia is referred to as shamayim throughout the Torah, whereas the celestial regions in the spiritual sense are called shm’ey hashamyim, “the upper heavens.” Compare Nechemyah 9,6 where we are told:אתה עשית את השמים, שמי השמים וכל צבאם, “it is You Who have made the sky, the heavens and all their hosts.” In Deuteronomy 10,14 Moses wrote: והן לה' אלוקיך שמים ושמי השמים, “both the skies and the heavens are Yours, O Lord.”

ויהי ערב ויהי בקר יום שני, the day faded towards evening until the second morning appeared. Thereby the second of the six days of G’d’s creative activity had come to a close. With this morning the third “day” commenced.

ויאמר אלוקים יקוו המים... אל מקום אחד, we already explained on verse 2 that the means employed to achieve this was the ruach, the wind. This is the reason why we were told already in verse 2 that “G’d’s wind (spirit) hovered over the expanse of the deep, something which occurred by making the rakia. (between heaven and earth) Now the water above the earth were concentrated in one region, location.

ותראה היבשה, a reference to the earth which had already been created at the same time as the heaven, before the light had been created, as I explained on verse 2.. It does not matter whether this occurred spread over a short period or over a long period.

ליבשה ארץ, as I explained earlier, the “yabashah” is none other than the earth mentioned in verse 1 as הארץ, as well as in many other places.

דשא, every kind of herb collectively is known as דשא whereas every individual type of herb is known as עשב.

עושה פרי למינו, according to the plain meaning of the text the word למינו here refers to the herbs. When the word occurs again in connection with the trees, it includes the עשב which the text had defined as carrying within it its own seed.

עושה פרי למינו, an apple tree would produce apples, not dates.

אשר זרעו בו, the seed would be within the fruit, not within the trunk. This would enable man to plant this kind of tree as well as others, each of their respective species.

יהי מארות, “let there be luminaries;” it is common for the Torah to apply a singular mode to nouns described in the plural, such as in Numbers 9,6 ויהי אנשים אשר היו טמאים, “there was (singular) men who were ritually impure, etc." The meaning of our verse here is: “let a certain process occur as a result of which luminaries will materialise in the sky of the heavens.”

ברקיע השמים, in the firmament which spans the heavens.

ברקיע, seeing that the word ברקיע is in the construct mode, linked to the word following it, i.e. “the sky of the heaven, the ra-kia, the vowel under the letter ר is a brief one, chataf, such as the difference between katzir, harvest, and k’tzir chittim, “wheat harvest,” where the word k’tzir is in the construct mode, belonging to the word chittim, wheat. (Ruth 2,23) להבדיל בין היום ובין הלילה, the Torah had already mentioned earlier (verse 4) that G’d had made a separation between light and dark, so what need was there for the luminaries in order to accomplish this? The fact is that up until this point the precise point when night or day commences and ends had not yet been defined. This came about only when the sunrise and sunset became visible observable phenomena on earth. Similarly, the advent of visible stars in the sky now signaled that dusk had come to an end. להבדיל בין (תחלת) היום ובין (תחלת) הלילה, to separate night from the beginning of the day and day from the beginning of the night.

והיו לאותות ולמועדים, an oblique reference to Kings II 20,8-9 where King Chizkiyah had asked G’d for a sign in the sky that Isaiah’s promise that the decree of his death had been cancelled and that G’d had added another 15 years to his life was definitive. We have other verses (Yoel 3,3) as well as Jeremiah 10,2 in which these phenomena in the sky are described as clear signals by G’d to man of things to come.

ולמועדים, the orbit of the moon which renews its path every 29 and a half days serves as a legal instrument used in determining dates which appear in documents used by the Jewish people. Compare what David wrote about this in Psalms 104,19

ולימים, and as days. Upon investigation it will be seen that certain stars orbit at intervals of exactly 24 hours.

ושנים, and as years, a reference to the four seasons of the year, which together comprise an entire year.

והיו למאורות, they should provide light for the physical universe.

הקטן, the smaller of the two.

ולהבדיל בין האור ובין החושך, between the period when light begins and the period when darkness begins. Sunrise is the period when light begins, whereas the clear visibility of the stars in the evening is the period when the darkness begins.

יעופף על הארץ, even though its creation originated from the waters, it would grow to maturity on earth.

התנינים הגדולים, even though, in the previous verse, the Torah reports on the directive for the waters to produce multiple reproductions of each species which has its habitat in the waters, and we could have thought that this did not include gigantic creatures such as whales, the fact is they (it) too had been produced by the waters at the same time. The species described as Leviathan, Nachash beriach and Leviathan beriach in Isaiah 27,1 and the Leviathan described in Job 40,25 are what our verse here refers to.

ויברך אותם אלוקים, you will note that all the categories of living creatures whom G’d created were blessed by Him.

ומלאו את המים, this is in the imperative mode, but in a relatively weak conjugation such as אמרו לאלוקים in Psalms 663, or in Hoseah 2,5 רדפו מהר. If the Torah had written mal-u instead mil-u this would have been an imperative in the strong conjugation, comparable to G’d commanding Moses and Aaron with the words dabb-ru (Exodus 12,3.)

ירב. The word means “may it increase in numbers,” an alternate way of saying yirbeh. We have a similar construction in yifen and yifneh respectively, meaning: “he will turn.” Any verb that can accept the letter ה at the end, may appear both with or without that letter.

וחיתו ארץ, the construction is similar to Psalms 104,8 למעינו מים, or to Numbers 24,3 בנו בעור, the letter ו at the end of the word וחיתו is an addition.

ויהי כן, the result of G’d’s directive continued in force for all times.

ויאמר, G’d addressed His angels.

נעשה אדם, these words have to be understood as in Kings I 22,19-22. In these verses the prophet Jeremiah depicts a conversation in the celestial regions between G’d and His angels and they discuss how to trap Achav through a deliberately false message by the false prophet Michayu, into bringing about his own destruction as retribution for his judicial murder of Navot the Yezreelite. We find similar references to G’d “consulting” in Isaiah 6,8 as well as in Job 1,6 where G’d is described as giving Satan leeway in his treatment of Job בצלמנו, in the image of the angels. [It could not refer to G’d seeing that no one had ever seen something that could be described as an “image” of G’d, the totally spiritual Being. Ed.]

כדמותנו, similar to us (angels) in our intellectual faculties. This is borne out by the fact that when man’s spiritual decline is described in Psalms 49,3 his intelligence at that time is compared to a בהמה, a domesticated mammal.

וירדו, the root of the word is רדה to exercise authority, dominion. The construction is similar to that of ויבכו, derived from בכה, and ויעש, derived from עשה, the last root letter being dropped in all of these examples.

בצלמו, in the image of man. בצלם אלוקים, in the image of angels. Do not be surprised if the creation of the angels has not been referred to in detail in the whole report of creation. Moses did not set himself the task of describing either the details of the heavens or hell, and their creation. Neither did he indulge in describing what is known as מעשה מרכבה, the structure of G’d’s entourage, some of which has been transmitted to us by the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah, respectively. All that is included in the report of creation that Moses recorded here is the visible universe, that which is subject to perception by our senses, as we explained on verse 1.

זכר ונקבה ברא אותם, as the Torah will proceed to explain in detail in chapter 2,21 “He took one of Adam’s sides and fashioned Chavah from it.” We are simply faced here with the report of a generalisation first, followed by greater detail This is also what is described as one of the 32 methods by which Torah can be explained in the treatise of Rabbi Eliezer son of Rabbi Yossi hagalili, who explained this verse in this fashion.

וכבשוה, the letter כ is “weak,” (without the dot inside) as in Numbers 32,29 ונכבשה הארץ לפניכם, “and the land will have been conquered before you.” The reason why there is no such dot is because it is in the imperative mode. On the other hand, if the letter כ here would have had the dagesh,” the construction of the verb would have been in the past tense, not an imperative.

הנה נתתי לכם, “I am now giving you.” This is an example of a past construction really meaning the present tense. We find examples of this in Genesis 14,22 when Avraham says הרימותי ידי, literally “I have raised my hand,” but meaning: “I am raising my hand, swearing an oath.. We find another example of this in Genesis 23,13 where Avraham refers to the payment to Efron for the cave of Machpelah, saying נתתי כסף השדה, literally “I have given the money for the field.” This could not be a past tense, as he had not known the price charged until this very moment.

ולכל חית הארץ, however, meat would not be permitted as food for man until Noach, when G’d specifically told him (Genesis 9,2) that meat henceforth would serve him as food just as up until then when G’d had allocated a vegetarian diet for man.

וירא אלוקים את כל אשר עשה והנה טוב מאד, G’d reviewed all that He had done during these six “days,” to see if anything needed adjustments or improvement, but He found that everything was very good.

“and G-d saw everything that He had made and behold, it was very good” – He looked carefully at all of His work and all of His actions which He had done [to see] if there was anything in them which needed perfecting, and behold, all were beautiful and perfected.