Rashiרש״י

English

יום אחד THE FIRST DAY (literally, one day) — According to the regular mode of expression used in this chapter it should be written here “first day”, just as it is written with regard to the other days “the second”, “the third”, “the fourth”. Why, then, does it write אחד “one”? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, was then the Only One (Sole Being) in His Universe, since the angels were not created until the second day. Thus it is explained in Genesis Rabbah (Genesis Rabbah 3:8).

Rosenbaum–Silbermann 1929–34 · pd

Hebrew / Aramaic

Rashi on Gen 1:5, s.v. יום אחד · pd

Notes

Rashi puts the question in the form the Latin bench uses — by the order of the chapter's own language it should have written 'first day,' as it writes second, third, fourth — and answers it from Bereshit Rabbah 3:8: because the Holy One was then alone (yachid) in his world, the angels not having been created until the second day. Ambrose asks the same question in Latin seven centuries earlier and answers it from the length of a circuit; Bruno of Segni answers it from the logic of relatives. Note that Silbermann's English renders the lemma 'THE FIRST DAY (literally, one day)' — the translator conceding the point the commentary exists to dispute.

Threads

• → cites · Bereshit Rabbah
  Rashi names his source — 'thus it is explained in Bereshit Rabbah' — and reproduces R. Yudan's answer, that God was alone (yachid) in his world, adding the datum that fixes it: the angels were not created until the second day.
• ← parallel · Ambrose
  The same question in two languages seven hundred years apart: he could have said 'first,' with a second and third to follow, and that seemed the order — so why 'one'? Ambrose answers from the twenty-four-hour circuit, Rashi from God's solitude. No contact is possible in either direction.
• ← parallel · Philo of Alexandria
  The two poles of this crux's finding, and they turn out to be one reading held four hundred years apart in two languages by two Jews, neither of whom could have read the other. Rashi, out of Bereshit Rabbah: it says one and not first because the Holy One was yachid be-olamo, alone in his world, the angels not having been created until the second day. Philo: day not first but one, because of the monosis of the intelligible world, which has a monadic nature. Both take the cardinal as a report about solitude rather than about position in a series; both need it to mean that on that day there was nothing to count with. What is alone differs entirely, God in the one and the intelligible world in the other, and the grammatical argument underneath is the same argument.