Bereshit Rabbah

English

It is taught: The light that was created during the six days of Creation cannot illuminate by day, because it would make the orb of the sun seem dim [by comparison], nor can it [illuminate] at night, as it was created to illuminate only during the day. Where is it, then? It was stored away, and is designated for the righteous for the future, as it is stated: “The light of the moon will be like the light of the sun and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, like the light of the seven days” (Isaiah 30:26). This is bewildering: “Seven [days]”? Are they not three? Is it not so, that the lights were created only on the fourth day? It is, rather, like a person who says: This and that I am preparing for the seven days of the wedding feast. Rabbi Neḥemya said: These are the seven days of mourning for the righteous Methuselah, during which the Holy One blessed be He conferred extra light upon them.

The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022 · sefaria-midrash-rabbah

Hebrew / Aramaic

Bereshit Rabbah 3:6, the stored light (Vilna numbering) · cc-by-sa

Notes

The rabbinic answer proper, and it has no Latin counterpart at all. The light of the six days cannot shine by day, because it would make the sun's disc look dim, and it was not made to shine by night: so where is it? It was stored away, designated for the righteous in the time to come (Isa 30:26). The section then has to explain why Isaiah says seven days when the luminaries were made on the fourth, and answers with a wedding feast and, in R. Neḥemya's name, with the seven days of mourning for Methuselah. The Latin bench never hides the light: it either turns it into the angels or turns it into a proto-sun, and the one thing it never does is take it out of the world and keep it. Slice note (Phase 4): this witness originally ran to the end of the Sefaria segment and so swallowed the va-yavdel material — R. Ze'eira on the havdala blessing, hivdilo lo, R. Yoḥanan and Resh Lakish's two generals, R. Tanḥuma on Isa 45:7 and R. Elazar on the missing divine name. That is a different argument on a different clause and is now `br-3-6b` on K9. The slice was trimmed here rather than the new witness deleted.

Threads

• ← parallel · Bereshit Rabbah
  Two sections of one compilation asking the crux from opposite ends: 3:4 asks what the light was made from and answers with God's garment and the site of the Temple; 3:6 asks where it is now and answers that it was stored away for the righteous.
• ← parallel · Babylonian Talmud
  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
  The plain sense, taken from Bereshit Rabbah: it was not seemly that light and darkness should work in confusion, so he assigned each its own hours. Rashi keeps the aggadic hiding and the peshat division side by side and does not merge them.