1 בראשית IN THE BEGINNING — Rabbi Isaac said: The Torah which is the Lawbook of Israel should have commenced with the verse (Exodus 12:2) “This month shall be unto you the first of the months” which is the first commandment given to Israel. What is the reason, then, that it commences with the account of the Creation? Because of the thought expressed in the text (Psalms 111:6) “He declared to His people the strength of His works (i.e. He gave an account of the work of Creation), in order that He might give them the heritage of the nations.” For should the peoples of the world say to Israel, “You are robbers because you took by force the lands of the seven nations of Canaan”, Israel may reply to them, “All the earth belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; He created it and gave it to whom He pleased. When He willed He gave it to them, and when He willed He took it from them and gave it to us” (Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 187).

2 בראשית ברא, IN THE BEGINNING, GOD CREATED — This verse calls aloud for an explanation in the manner that our Rabbis explained it: God created the world for the sake of the Torah which is called (Proverbs 8:22) “The beginning (ראשית) of His (God’s) way”, and for the sake of Israel who is called (Jeremiah 2:3) “The beginning (ראשית) of His (God’s) increase’’. If, however, you wish to explain it in its plain sense, explain it thus: At the beginning of the creation of heaven and earth when the earth was without form and void and there was darkness, God said, “Let there be light”. The text does not intend to point out the order of the acts of Creation — to state that these (heaven and earth) were created first; for if it intended to point this out, it should have written ‘בראשונה ברא את השמים וגו “At first God created, etc.” And for this reason: Because, wherever the word ראשית occurs in Scripture, it is in the construct state. E. g., (Jeremiah 26:1) “In the beginning of (בראשית) the reign of Jehoiakim”; (Genesis 10:10) “The beginning of (ראשית) his kingdom”; (Deuteronomy 18:4) “The first fruit of (ראשית) thy corn.” Similarly here you must translate בראשית ברא אלהים as though it read בראשית ברוא, at the beginning of God’s creating. A similar grammatical construction (of a noun in construct followed by a verb) is: (Hosea 1:2) תחלת דבר ה’ בהושע, which is as much as to say, “At the beginning of God’s speaking through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea.” Should you, however, insist that it does actually intend to point out that these (heaven and earth) were created first, and that the meaning is, “At the beginning of everything He created these, admitting therefore that the word בראשית is in the construct state and explaining the omission of a word signifying “everything” by saying that you have texts which are elliptical, omitting a word, as for example (Job 3:10) “Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb” where it does not explicitly explain who it was that closed the womb; and (Isaiah 8:4) “He shall take away the spoil of Samaria” without explaining who shall take it away; and (Amos 6:12) “Doth he plough with oxen,” and it does not explicitly state, “Doth a man plough with oxen”; (Isaiah 46:10) “Declaring from the beginning the end,” and it does not explicitly state, “Declaring from the beginning of a thing the end of a thing’ — if it is so (that you assert that this verse intends to point out that heaven and earth were created first), you should be astonished at yourself, because as a matter of fact the waters were created before heaven and earth, for, lo, it is written, (v. 2)

“The Spirit of God was hovering on the face of the waters,” and Scripture had not yet disclosed when the creation of the waters took place — consequently you must learn from this that the creation of the waters preceded that of the earth. And a further proof that the heavens and earth were not the first things created is that the heavens were created from fire (אש) and water (מים), from which it follows that fire and water were in existence before the heavens. Therefore you must need to admit that the text teaches nothing about the earlier or later sequence of the acts of Creation.

3 ברא אלהים GOD [AS JUDGE] CREATED — It does not state ‘ברא ה “The Lord (the Merciful One) created because at first God intended to create it (the world) to be placed under the attribute (rule) of strict justice, but He realized that the world could not thus endure and therefore gave precedence to Divine Mercy allying it with Divine Justice. It is to this that what is written in (Genesis 2:4) alludes — “In the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven”.

Parsha (1) Bereishis (in The Beginning) (Genesis 1:16:8) 1 1:1 In the (Be-kadmin) first times Hashem created the d’bish-maiya and the ‘Apra3 .*4 1:2 Now the ‘Apra was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep Hashem’s Rukha d’ Qudsha was hovering over the surface of the waters 1:3 Hashem said, “Let there be Nuhra,” and there was Nuhra5. *light 1:4 Hashem saw the Nuhra, and saw that it was Hashem good. Hashem divided the Nuhra from the darkness. 1:5 Hashem called the Nuhra Day, and the darkness he called Night. There was evening and there was morning, one day. 1:6 Hashem said, “Let there be an expanse in the middle of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” 1:7 Hashem made the expanse and divided the waters which were under the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse, and it was so. 1:8 Hashem called the expanse sky. There was evening and there was morning, a second day. 1:9 Hashem said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together in one gathering, and let the dry land appear;” and it was so. And the waters under the sky gathered to their gatherings, and the dry land appeared. 1:10 Hashem called the dry land ‘Apra, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. Hashem saw that it was good. 1:11 Hashem said, “Let the ‘Apra put forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with its seed in it, on the ‘Apra;” and it was so. 1:12 The ‘Apra brought forth grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with its seed in it, after their kind; and Hashem saw that it was good. 1:13 There was evening and there was morning, the third day. 1:14 Hashem said, “Let there be Nuhra in the expanse of the sky to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years; 1:15 and let them be for Nuhra in the expanse of the sky to give Nuhra on the ‘Apra;” and it was so. 3 Aramaic ׳א, ( — עַ רֲא’ Apra dust, earth], From an unused root probably meaning to be firm; the earth (at large, or partitively a land) — X common, country, earth, field, ground, land, X nations, way, + wilderness, world. 4* 1:1/ Yah Channa1:1 “In the Be-kadmin of creation, there was the Manifestation. And that Manifestation was with Hashem and Hashem was the [the embodiment of] that Manifestation. 5 The light in Aramaic (nuhra) means the illumination of what is unknown. LIGHT and DARK are not warring opposites as they are in Greek philosophy. For an ancient Aramaic or Hebrew speaker, the Creator brought forth both LIGHT [what is known]and DARKNESS [what is unknown.]