Babylonian Talmud

English

And was light created on the first day? But it is written, (Genesis 1:17) "and God set them in the firmament of the heaven," and it is written, (Genesis 1:19) "and there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day." It is like R. Elazar. For R. Elazar said, The light which the Holy One, blessed be He, created on the first day, Adam saw through it from one end of the world to the other. When the Holy One, blessed be He, peered at the generation of the Flood and the generation of the Dispersion, and saw that their actions were destructive, He stood up and hid it from them, as it is said, (Job 38:15) "And from the wicked their light is withheld." And for whom did He take it away? For the righteous of the time to come, as it is said, (Genesis 1:4) "And God saw the light, that it was good," and "good" only refers to the righteous, as it is said, (Isaiah 3:10) " Say of the righteous, that he is good." Once He saw the light He hid away for the righteous, He rejoiced, as it is said, (Proverbs 13:9) "He rejoices at the light of the righteous." Like [the following] Tannaic argument: The light which the Holy One, blessed be He, created on the first day, Adam observed and peered through it from one end of the world to the other. These are the words of R. Yaakov. And the sages say, These are the lights which were created on the first day, but were not hung up until the fourth day.

Sefaria Community Translation · cc0

Hebrew / Aramaic

b. Chagigah 12a (Vilna) · cc-by-sa

Notes

The whole crux in five short segments, and it opens with the objection in the same form the Latin bench uses: was light created on the first day? But it is written that God set them in the firmament, and that was the fourth day. Two answers follow. R. Elazar's: by that light Adam saw from one end of the world to the other, and when God looked at the generations of the Flood and the Dispersion he hid it, storing it for the righteous. And then a tannaitic dispute — R. Yaakov holds the seeing-light, and the sages say 'these are the lights that were created on the first day but were not hung up until the fourth.' That second answer is exactly the one Augustine reports as having been said 'by someone' at De Genesi ad litteram I.11, without a name.

Threads

• ← cites · Rashi
  Phase 4. Rashi's aggadic half names Chagigah 12a: 'he saw that the wicked were unworthy of using it; he therefore set it apart, reserving it for the righteous in the world to come'. The dibbur gives its two sources in order, the aggadah first and the peshat second, and each belongs to a different crux on this site.
• → parallel · Bereshit Rabbah
  Phase 4. Two redactions of one answer to va-yavdel: the Bavli that the light was stored away for the righteous, and Bereshit Rabbah's Rabbis that 'he separated it for the righteous in the time to come, like a king who had a fine portion and set it aside for his son' — beside R. Yehuda bar Simon's harder reading, that he separated it for himself.
• → parallel · Bereshit Rabbah
  The same doctrine on two proof texts and neither cites the other: the midrash hides the light because it would dim the sun's disc, and proves the storing from Isa 30:26; the Talmud hides it from the generations of the Flood and the Dispersion, and proves it from Job 38:15 and from 'God saw the light, that it was good' read through Isa 3:10, since 'good' means the righteous.
• ← cites · Rashi
  Rashi names his source — 'here too we must depend upon the statement of the Agada' — and gives R. Elazar's answer: God saw the wicked were unworthy of the light and set it apart for the righteous in the world to come. Silbermann's note supplies the reference to Chagigah 12a.
• ← parallel · Augustine
  The one place on this crux where the benches hold the same opinion in the same words. Augustine: 'this too I know to have been said by someone, that the nature of light was first brought in when it was said Let there be light, but afterwards, when the luminaries are spoken of, it was recorded what was made out of that same light.' The Bavli: 'the sages say, these are the lights that were created on the first day but were not hung up until the fourth.' Augustine cannot name whose opinion it is; the Talmud names the party that holds it, against R. Yaakov.
• ← parallel · Hugh of St Victor
  Both make the first light continuous with the sun rather than replaced by it: the sages hold that the lights were created on the first day and hung on the fourth; Hugh holds that a luminous body was made in the sun's stead and place, turning as the sun turns, until the sun came. The Latin argument is from the fitness of means, the rabbinic from the wording of Gen 1:17.
• ← parallel · Angelomus of Luxeuil
  The same objection in the same form on both benches: if the luminaries are made on the fourth day, what is this light? The Talmud raises it from Gen 1:17 and answers with R. Elazar's hidden light; Angelomus raises it, floats a light above the firmament from which the sun was lit, and answers with the angels.
• ← parallel · Philo of Alexandria
  The Bavli says the light the Holy One created on the first day was such that a man could see from one end of the world to the other, and that seeing what the generations would do he stored it away for the righteous. Philo says the intelligible outshines the visible as the mind outshines the eyes of the body. Both are saying that the first light is out of proportion to any use the world has for it; the Bavli answers by removing it from the world, Philo by putting it in a different order of being.
• ← contests · Nicholas of Lyra
  The two most confident answers on this daf, and they are opposites. The Bavli: the light of the first day was such that a man could see by it from one end of the world to the other, and God stored it away for the righteous, so it is not in the world at all. Lyra: it is the light of the sun, which is in the sky now. Both refuse the compromise the middle of this crux is made of; one removes the light from creation, the other identifies it with the most ordinary thing in it.