R and D in Briat HaOlam

(3) God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. (4) God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. (5) God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.

(7) Rabbi Judah bar Simon said: it does not say, ‘It was evening,’ but ‘And it was evening.’ Hence we derive that there was a time-system prior to this. Rabbi Abbahu said: This teaches us that God created worlds and destroyed them, saying, ‘This one pleases me; those did not please me.’ Rabbi Pinhas said, Rabbi Abbahu derives this from the verse, ‘And God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good,’ as if to say, ‘This one pleases me, those others did not please me.’

(2) Before the world was created, the Holy One, blessed be He, with His Name alone existed, and the thought arose in Him to create the world. He began to trace (the foundations of) the world before Himself, but it would not stand. They told a parable, To what is the matter like? To a king who wishes to build a palace for himself. If he had not traced in the earth its foundations, its exits and its entrances, he does not begin to build. Likewise the Holy One, blessed be He, was tracing (the plans of) the world before Himself, but it did not remain standing until He created teshuvah.