Let there be lights יְהִ֤י מְאֹרֹת֙
Though we have already had three “days,” each with an evening and morning of its own, this has all happened (somehow) without there being a sun to create the difference between them. All that will change now, on Day Four.
The lights are me’orot, singular ma’or. Just as in English, this is a word that is clearly related to the or ‘light’ that came into being in v. 3, but referring to an object: not light but a light. Like so many of the familiar words from this story, it is not at all as common in the Bible as one might expect. It does seem to refer to “light,” the immaterial substance, in Ps 90:8, radiating from God’s face, and metaphorically in Prov 15:30 to the “light” in a happy person’s eye.
In Ezek 32:8 and Ps 74:16 it also refers to the lights above our heads. But in all 15 of its other occurrences, it refers to artificial light, and specifically the light (always singular) that illuminates the Tabernacle. Isaac Abarbanel (b. 1437 in Portugal, fled Spain in 1492, d. 1508 in Venice) notes in his commentary on Exodus 25 that implicitly “the construction of the Tabernacle alludes to the form of the world.” If the Tabernacle is a world in miniature, the use of ma’or there may be a way that the text reflects this likeness.
It will be a while before this column gets to the book of Exodus, let alone to the Tabernacle, but much of the language at the end of that book seems to point to the creation of the Tabernacle as a second stage of the creation of the world. Other biblical voices understand the very formation of the Israelite people as a new stage in creation. (See Psalm 114 for one example; I hope to discuss this psalm one day in a book or course on biblical poetry.)
In any case, it’s worth noting that there seems to be a sort of symmetry in the six days of the week of creation. From that perspective, we’re now beginning the second half of the process, with the light of the sun, moon, and stars corresponding to the light that came into being in v. 3, on Day One. We’ll be keeping an eye on that symmetry from now on as we proceed through Days Four, Five, and Six.
in the Sky cupola בִּרְקִ֣יעַ הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם
This phrase is more commonly (and perhaps more poetically) translated as “in the firmament of the heaven” (KJV). Remember, though, that according to v. 8, the firmament is “the heaven.” In the language we’ve been using, the cupola is Sky. We are reading the story of the creation of Sky and Earth, and when God made the cupola, he named it Sky.
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