Previous section → The Earth Takes Form
“And God said, Let the waters be gathered, etc.” [The discussion extends] until “And God said, Let the earth bring forth vegetation”.
When Ibn Ezra addressed the question of the firmament, he wrote that the appearance of the dry land was the cause of the formation of the firmament. For when the sun’s rays acted upon the hardness and dryness of the exposed earth, the air adjacent to us became clear and crystalline. According to this explanation, however, the sun’s rays and illumination must have preceded the drying of the earth, since they were its cause; and the appearance of the dry land must in turn have preceded the formation of the firmament.
In this, Ibn Ezra followed the opinion of the philosophers in their writings on meteorology, where it is stated that the exposure of the dry land and its remaining uncovered by water are caused by the movements of the sun in its inclined sphere and by the movements of the other stars. In this process the celestial bodies constitute the efficient cause, just as the final cause is the determination of the forms of generation found in plants and living creatures1. The words of the Philosopher, however, pertain to the ordinary course of nature, for the philosophers did not address the creation of the world.
Consider how far the words of Ibn Ezra—under whose shadow we had hoped to live in interpreting the Torah—have departed from the truth of the Torah, and how they contradict the account of the work of Creation.
But consider how far the words of Ibn Ezra—under whose shadow we had hoped to live in interpreting the Torah—have departed from the truth of the Torah, and how they contradict the account of the work of Creation2. The sun, moon, and stars were created and made on the fourth day, whereas the dry land appeared on the third day, before them. Moreover, the firmament was made on the second day, before the appearance of the dry land. How, then, could something made on the fourth day be the cause of something that occurred on the third, and something that occurred on the third be the cause of what was made on the second?
Ibn Ezra thought to resolve all this by saying that the expressions “And God said, Let the waters be gathered” and, likewise, “And God said, Let there be luminaries” should be understood as meaning “And God had already said”. He endeavored to bring proofs that the conjunctive vav can sometimes be used in Scripture with the sense of “and already”. Yet this provides no answer concerning the waters or the sequence of the works of Creation. Why should Scripture mention the formation of an effect before mentioning the formation of its cause?
Nor can it be said that all these things came into being simultaneously. The divine Torah separates them into distinct sections and assigns one work to the second day, another to the third, and another to the fourth, thereby indicating that they did not occur as a single event. Neither can it be said, as this scholar maintained, that no creation took place on the third day because the gathering of the waters was not itself an act of creation; for on the third day we find the creation of grasses and trees.
In general, I would say that, according to Ibn Ezra’s view, the declaration “Let there be a firmament” amounts to nothing other than the declaration “Let the waters be gathered”, since both refer only to the separation of that portion of the air in which we live—which, according to him, is the firmament—between the elemental waters that exist potentially and the waters that exist actually, so that there might be an open space in which to dwell upon the earth. There would consequently be neither a genuine distinction between the days nor a distinction between their respective works. All of this amounts to contradicting the verses and distorting their meaning. The truth of the matter, however, is otherwise.
The truth is that, after the Holy One, blessed be He, had made on the second day all the celestial spheres beneath and within the highest sphere, He determined in His wisdom that the waters should be gathered and the dry land revealed, and that grasses and trees should begin to grow. All this took place before the luminaries and stars were made, so that the first and absolute Creation should not be mistaken for natural generation. For in the ordinary course of nature, lower beings are acted upon by the powers of the celestial bodies—both in the continued exposure of the dry land, so that the waters do not overwhelm it, and in the generation of plants. As our Sages said: “There is no blade of grass below that does not have a constellation in the firmament that strikes it and says to it, Grow!”3
(Parashat Bereshit — Genesis 1:9, Before Nature Took Its Course in the Commentary of Don Isaac Abarbanel)
Next section →
