Moses ben Naḥman (Naḥmanides)מֹשֶׁה בֶּן נַחְמָן

English

And the earth, includes all the four elements, [not merely the land] as in the verse, And the heaven and the earth were finished, which includes the entire lower sphere, and in Praise the Eternal from the earth, ye sea-monsters, and all deeps, and as in many other verses. Now with this creation, which was like a very small point having no substance, everything in the heavens and on the earth was created. The word eth —[eth hashamayim ve’eth ha’aretz] — is like “the essence of a thing.” The Sages have always set it forth as serving to include, since it is derived from the expression, The morning ‘atha’ (cometh), and also the night. And so did our Rabbis say: “‘Eth hashamayim (the heavens)’ — eth includes the sun, moon, stars and constellations. ‘Ve’eth ha’aretz (and the earth)’ — ve’eth includes the trees, herbs, and the Garden of Eden.” These include all created things which are corporeal.

Charles B. Chavel, 1971–76 · chavel-ramban

Hebrew / Aramaic

Ramban on Gen 1:1, s.v. בראשית (the four elements and the particle et) · sefaria-vocalized

Notes

Ramban gives the Latin schools' answer and the midrash's answer in the same paragraph, and does not notice that they are two. 'The earth' takes in all four elements — as in 'the heavens and the earth were finished', which covers the whole lower sphere, and 'praise the Lord from the earth, you sea-monsters and all deeps' — which is Abelard's reading of the verse to the letter, and Ambrose's before him. Then the particle: et is like 'the essence of a thing', and the Sages have always expounded it as including, so that et ha-shamayim brings in the sun, moon, stars and constellations and ve-et ha-aretz the trees, herbs and the Garden of Eden. He names Bereshit Rabbah for it. The two answers pull opposite ways — one makes the two words a physics of elements, the other an inventory of furniture — and the sentence that joins them is 'these include all created things which are corporeal'. Chavel's English shows on Sefaria as CC BY; licence key chavel-ramban is marked for checking before publication.

Threads

• → cites · Bereshit Rabbah
  'And so did our Rabbis say: eth hashamayim — eth includes the sun, moon, stars and constellations; ve'eth ha'aretz — ve'eth includes the trees, herbs, and the Garden of Eden.' Ramban names Bereshit Rabbah (parashah 1) and reproduces the inventory, adding only the derivation of et from 'atha boker' (Isa 21:12).
• → parallel · Peter Abelard
  'The word ha'aretz includes these four elements' and 'by the name of heaven and earth I judge the four elements to be taken in here' are the same reading of the verse, reached in Girona and at the Paraclete a century and a half apart with no possible contact. The distribution differs: Abelard splits the four between the two words, Ramban puts all four under 'earth'.
• → parallel · Babylonian Talmud
  Ramban gives the Palestinian form of the et-derivation (sun, moon, stars, constellations; trees, herbs, Eden) and not the Babylonian one (that without the particles shamayim would be a divine name), although both were before him — the inventory is usable for his physics and the anxiety about the divine name is not.