Bereshit Rabbah

English

Rabbi Ze’eira son of Rabbi Abahu preached in Caesarea: From where is it derived that someone does not recite a blessing on the candle [at havdala on Saturday night] until he avails himself of its light? It is from here: “[God] saw…and [God] distinguished [vayavdel].” Rabbi Yehuda bar Rabbi Simon said: He set it aside for Himself. The Rabbis say: He set it aside for the righteous in the World to Come. This is analogous to a king who had a fine portion of food and set it aside for his son. “God called the light, Day, and to the darkness He called Night. It was evening and it was morning, one day” (Genesis 1:5). Rabbi Berekhya said: This is what two eminent men of the world, Rabbi Yoḥanan and Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish, expounded: “[God] distinguished” – this refers to distinguishing in the literal sense. This is analogous to a king who had two commanders, one to be in charge by day and one to be in charge by night. They were arguing with one another. This one said: ‘I will be in charge by day,’ and that one said: ‘I will be in charge by day.’ The king summoned the first one and said to him: ‘So-and-so, the day will be your realm.’ Likewise for the second one, he said to him: ‘So-and-so, the night will be your realm.’ So, too, “God called the light, Day” – He said to it: ‘The day will be your realm.’ “And to the darkness He called Night” – He said to it: ‘The night will be your realm.’ Rabbi Yoḥanan said: That is what the Holy One blessed be He says to Job: “In all your days, have you commanded the morning and apprised darkness of its place?” (Job 38:12) – have you informed it of its place, where it is? This was a rhetorical question. Rabbi Tanḥuma said: I will say the source for this: “He forms light and creates darkness, He makes peace” (Isaiah 45:7) – after they were created, He made peace [between them].

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

Hebrew / Aramaic

Bereshit Rabbah 3:6, the va-yavdel block (Vilna numbering) · cc-by-sa

Notes

Five answers to va-yavdel in one block, and between them they cover the whole ground the Latin bench covers, in a different order and with a liturgical question in front. R. Ze'eira of Caesarea asks from where we know that one does not bless the lamp at havdala until he has used its light, and answers 'from here: he saw … and he separated' — the seeing must come before the separating, so the verse becomes the source of a benediction. R. Yehuda bar Simon: he separated it for himself. The Rabbis: 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. Then R. Yoḥanan and Resh Lakish, 'two eminent men of the world': va-yavdel means a real separating — a king with two generals, each claiming the day, told one 'day shall be your bound' and the other 'night shall be your bound'. Then R. Tanḥuma brings Isa 45:7, 'who forms light and creates darkness, who makes peace' — after they were created, he made peace between them, which grants outright that the darkness was created. Slice note: K8 built this Sefaria segment whole as `br-3-6` for its first half (the stored light); Phase 4 trimmed K8's slice rather than delete this one. Phase 6 split it again. R. Elazar's argument from the withheld divine name used to close this card, which put two arguments on two clauses on one witness against the frozen rule; it is now `br-3-6c`, and the two star threads that were always about it (t-k9-01 with Augustine, t-k9-24 with Hugh) point there. The split was forced by the move to the Wikisource recension, which prints R. Elazar BEFORE the va-yavdel block rather than after it — so the old cut is not a contiguous span in the new Hebrew at all.

Threads

• → parallel · Bede
  R. Yoḥanan and Resh Lakish's king with two generals, each claiming the day, told 'day shall be your bound' and 'night shall be your bound', and Bede's division 'not only by quality but by place', with the light over the upper part of the world and the lower left dark. Both make va-yavdel an assignment of territory, and the midrash says outright what Bede assumes: havdala mamash, a real separating and not a figure.
• → contests · Augustine
  The two benches at their furthest apart on the same clause. Augustine: God did not make the darkness, he ordered it, as a singer orders his silences. R. Tanḥuma, on Isa 45:7, 'who forms light and creates darkness, who makes peace': after they were created he made peace between them — the darkness is created, the making of peace is the dividing, and both are works. The rabbinic text has no term for a privation and never needs one.
• ← parallel · Rupert of Deutz
  The division as a judicial sentence, on both benches, with the same insistence that it is irreversible. Rupert: a terrible judgement of God upon the devil, 'by an unchangeable separation, so that neither can those who fell rise again, nor can those who refused to fall ever fall'. The midrash: the king calls each general and fixes his bound, and R. Berekhya introduces it as havdala mamash. The Latin makes it a verdict on persons and the rabbinic a decree about times, and both are about what may never be crossed again.
• ← contests · Abraham ibn Ezra
  Ibn Ezra's 'the sense of and he divided is by the calling of names' is the flat denial of R. Yoḥanan and Resh Lakish's havdala mamash, a real separating, and he does not name them. He is also refusing R. Ze'eira's derivation, since a naming cannot be the source of a rule about looking at a flame. The grammarian dismantles in one clause the two things the midrash builds on this word.
• ← contests · Augustine
  Both benches read the darkness of this verse as something set aside, and the thing set aside is not the same. For Augustine it is the apostate angels, ordered but not approved; for R. Yehuda bar Simon and the Rabbis it is the light that is set aside — hivdilo lo, he separated it for himself, or for the righteous in the time to come. One tradition takes the division to be a removal of the darkness from fellowship, the other a reservation of the light from use, and each is unavailable to the other.
• ← cites · Rashi
  Phase 4. Rashi's plain sense names Bereshit Rabbah 3:6 for it: 'he saw that it was good, and that it was not seemly that light and darkness should function together in a confused manner. He therefore limited this one's sphere of activity to the daytime, and this one's to the nighttime' — which is R. Yoḥanan and Resh Lakish's king with two generals, each told his bound. Written at Phase 4 because `rashi-1-4` was built for K8 and carries both cruxes' answers in one dibbur.
• ← parallel · Babylonian Talmud
  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.