Beresheit 5769

Divine Speech

Beresheit

 

Va’yomer Elokim y’he ohr va’y’he ohr (1:3)

And God said: Let there be light! And there was light

 

Speech is problematic.  We use speech to telegraph ideas from our minds into the minds of others. We have no means apart from material speech to transfer immaterial ideas. The problem with material speech is that it often corresponds poorly (or not at all) to immaterial ideas that we mean them to convey. This holds for all speech, including Divine speech. The solitary exception to this rule is God’s first speech that created light.

Y’he ohr materializes immediately as y’he ohr, separated only by a conjunctive vav.  Identical words render both Divine utterance and the resulting creation. We might infer from this that created light corresponded precisely to God’s idea of light.

From this point on, Divine speech never again produces identical creations. For example, here are God’s next three creative speeches:

1.                           vv. 6-7, God says “Y’he rakia (let there be a firmament)…  Va’ya’as Elokim et ha’rakia (and God made the firmament)”

2.                           v. 9, God says “v’tay-reh ha-yabashah (let the dry land appear)… va’y’he chain (and it was so)”

3.                           vv. 11-12, God says “tadshey ha-aretz desheh (let the earth sprout sprouts)… v’totzay ha-aretz desheh (and the earth brought forth sprouts)”

There is no more identity between speech and creation. In fact much of subsequent creation occurs by means of God’s making distinctions between things (havdalah) rather than by de novo creation (bara). By the sixth “day”, God appears to recognize that His words give rise to something other than His ideas for creation. With His final creative utterance, God creates Adam betzalmaynu kidmootaynu (…Adam, in our image, after our likeness). In similar fashion, everything we create, including our children, come out differently than we imagine, often in surprising ways.

Why didn’t creation correspond more precisely to Divine imagination? The answer must be located in language. God brought everything into being with His word (Baruch she’amar v’hayah ha’olam, from the shacharit liturgy). Words cannot produce identity with ideas. Therefore creation differs from God’s conception. As noted above, the creation of light is the exception to the rule. Light came into being identical to the words used to conceptualize it.

What was the first creation, light? According to Samson Rafael Hirsch, aleph-vav-resh (light) is related to the word ayin-vav-resh. This root means “to be awake, to become or to be receptive to external impressions (hence it also means ‘skin’, the organ of feeling)”. Light is an “awakening element that awakens all forces to development”.

God’s first speech created the process that awakens and illuminates the material universe. Awareness/light is a pure, unadulterated product of a Divine idea.  It was given to us in a form exactly as conceived by the mind of God. As no subsequent creation achieved as pure a translation from idea into speech, we are required to use our own powers of reason to study and understand everything else God created.