בראשית IN THE BEGINNING — Rabbi Isaac said: The Torah which is the Law book 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).
תהו ובהו DESOLATE AND VOID — The word תהו signifies astonishment and amazement, for a person would have been astonished and amazed at its emptiness.
A person should always enter an unfamiliar city at a time of good, i.e., while it is light, as the Torah uses the expression “It is good” with regard to the creation of light (see Genesis 1:4). This goodness is manifest in the sense of security one feels when it is light. And likewise, when one leaves a city he should leave at a time of good, meaning after sunrise the next morning, as it is stated in the verse: “And none of you shall go out of the opening of his house until the morning” (Exodus 12:22).
IN THE BEGINNING. Our wise men taught that the letter bet (of bereshit, in the beginning) is superfluous. They compare it to the bet in the word ba-rishonah (at the first) (Genesis 13:4). We know the bet in ba-rishonah to be superfluous for we find they shall set forth first (rishonah) (Numbers 2:9). However, if this were so the bet (of bereshit) would be vocalized with a long kamatz. Other scholars maintain that the word bereshit is always in the construct and its meaning in our verse is: “In the beginning of the evening, or of the night, or of the darkness.” However, they have overlooked And he chose a first part (reshit) for himself (Deuteronomy 33:21). Others say that the bet of bereshit is a preposition. They explain that Scripture intends to preclude the thought that heaven and earth were preexisting. Hence it states, In the beginning. I believe that bereshit is in the construct, as in In the beginning of (bereshit) the reign of Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 26:1). Don’t ask, how can a word in the construct be connected to a verb in the perfect. This presents no problem, for we find that very case in the verse When the Lord spoke at first with Hosea (Hosea 1:2), and in the verse the city where David encamped (Isaiah 29:1). The meaning of bereshit will be explained in our comments on the next verse.
However, there is another possible explanation for why the mishna opens with the evening Shema rather than with the morning Shema. If you wish, you could say instead that the tanna derives the precedence of the evening Shema from the order of the creation of the world. As it is written in the story of creation: “And there was evening, and there was morning, one day” (Genesis 1:5). According to this verse, day begins with the evening and not the morning. For both of these reasons it was appropriate to open the discussion of the laws of the recitation of Shema with the evening Shema.
זכר ונקבה ברא אותם MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM — And further on (Genesis 2:21) it is said: “and He took one of his ribs etc.” (The two passages appear to be contradictory.) But according to a Midrashic explanation, He created him at first with two faces, and afterwards He divided him. But the real sense of the verse is: here it tells you that both of them were created on the sixth day, but it does not explain to you how their creation took place; this it explains to you in another place (Genesis Rabbah 8:1 and see Eruvin 18a) .
The Gemara rejects that suggestion: No, everyone agrees that it was only one act of creation. However, one Sage holds: It is according to the initial thought that we proceed. And one Sage holds: It is according to the action that we proceed. God’s initial thought was to create man and woman as separate entities. Ultimately, they were created as one entity. That explanation is like the following. Rav Yehuda raises a contradiction. In one verse it is written: “And God created man in His own image” (Genesis 1:27), indicating one act of creation, and in another verse it is written: “Male and female He created them” (Genesis 5:2), indicating two acts. How can this apparent contradiction be resolved? Initially, the thought entered God’s mind to create two, but ultimately only one was actually created.
Rabbi Yoḥanan says: Any place in the Bible from where the heretics attempt to prove their heresy, i.e., that there is more than one god, the response to their claim is alongside them, i.e., in the immediate vicinity of the verses they cite. The verse states that God said: “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26), employing the plural, but it then states: “And God created man in His image” (Genesis 1:27), employing the singular. The verse states that God said: “Come, let us go down and there confound their language” (Genesis 11:7), but it also states: “And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower” (Genesis 11:5). The verse states in the plural: “There God was revealed [niglu] to him when he fled from the face of his brother” (Genesis 35:7), but it also states in the singular: “To God Who answers [haoneh] me in the day of my distress” (Genesis 35:3).
וכבשה, this is not a directive to conquer earth with muscular power, but to subdue it by means of man’s superior intellect. It means that man is to use his intelligence to prevent predators from invading his habitats, demonstrating the fact that man is superior, can outwit the beasts.
AND, BEHOLD, IT WAS VERY GOOD. This signifies their permanent existence, as I have explained. The meaning of the word me’od (very) is “mostly.” On this sixth day He added this word because he is speaking of creation in general which contains evil in some part of it. Thus He said that it was very good, meaning its me’od is good [thus conveying the thought that even the small part of it which is evil is basically also good, as is explained further on]. It is this thought which is the basis of the saying of the Rabbis in Bereshith Rabbah: “And, behold, it was very good. And, behold, it was good — this refers to death.” Similarly the Rabbis mentioned, “This means the evil inclination in man,” and, “This means the dispensation of punishment.” Onkelos also intended to convey this thought for he said here, “And, behold, it was very orderly,” meaning that the order was very properly arranged since the evil is needed for the preservation of the good, just as it is said, To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. Some Rabbis explain that on account of the superiority of man, He added special praise on his formation, i.e., that he is “very good.”