Abraham ibn Ezraאַבְרָהָם אִבְּן עֶזְרָא

English

And He saw: Like “I myself saw…” Ecclesiastes 2:13; Daniel 10:7, it is [seeing] in [one’s] thought. And the meaning of “and He separated” – through calling of names.

Sefaria Community Translation · cc0

Hebrew / Aramaic

Ibn Ezra on Gen 1:4 · pd

Notes

Two clauses, and each disposes of half the crux. 'And he saw' is like Qohelet's 'I myself saw' — it is in the thought, so nothing happened at that moment and there is no inspection to explain. 'And the meaning of and he divided is by the calling of names' — the dividing of v. 4 simply is the naming of v. 5, so there is no separate act of separation to be located in space, in time, or among the angels. Every Latin answer on this crux presupposes that va-yavdel reports a distinct work; Ibn Ezra denies the premise in nine Hebrew words. Nobody on the Latin bench considers it, and the grammarian's solution has no counterpart there — although Augustine at De Genesi contra Manichaeos comes within a sentence of it when he wonders whether to have divided just is to have named.

Threads

• → parallel · Augustine
  Both come to the possibility that the dividing and the naming are one act, and only one of them takes it. Augustine: 'perhaps, then, the dividing between light and darkness just is the calling of the light day and the darkness night, so that to have ordered these is to have named them' — and he leaves it as a perhaps and goes on. Ibn Ezra states it flatly as the meaning of the word: 'and the sense of and he divided is by the calling of names.' Nothing else on the Latin bench even entertains it.
• → parallel · Ambrose
  The seeing removed from the world in two ways. Ibn Ezra: 'and he saw' is like Qohelet's 'I myself saw' — it is in the thought, so no act is reported. Ambrose: God did not see what he did not know, and the seeing is the good work attesting itself. Both refuse to let the verse describe an inspection, and neither has to posit anything to do it, which is what separates them from Hugh's second light.
• → contests · Bereshit Rabbah
  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.
• ← parallel · Nicholas of Lyra
  Ibn Ezra says the meaning of and he divided is by the calling of names, which empties the verb of any physical content; Lyra fills it with nothing but physical content. Both refuse to let the dividing be an act performed on darkness, and they refuse it from opposite ends -- one because the verse is doing grammar, the other because it is doing astronomy.