Komentarz do Rodzaju 2:4

אלה THESE [ARE THE GENERATIONS] — “These” means those that are mentioned above.

THESE ARE THE GENERATIONS OF THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH WHEN THEY WERE CREATED. Scripture now relates the account of the heaven and the earth as regards rain and growth after they had been created and put in proper order, that the heavens shall give their dew²⁷⁶Zechariah 8:12. and rain, and the ground shall give her increase,²⁷⁶Zechariah 8:12. these making possible the existence of all living beings. And in the word b’hibaram (when they were created) — [which could be read as if it were two words: b’hei baram] — Scripture alludes to what the Rabbis have said:²⁷⁷Menachoth 29b., “He created them with the letter hei” [which is the last of the four letters of the Tetragrammaton]. It is for this reason that Scripture until this point mentioned only the word Elokim. This is explained in the verse: For all these things hath My hand made;²⁷⁸Isaiah 66:2. The last letter (hei) of the Tetragrammaton is in the Cabala considered the yad hashem (the hand of G-d). See my Hebrew commentary, p. 32. and so did Job say, Who knoweth not among all these, that the hand of the Eternal hath wrought this?²⁷⁹Job 12:9. This being so, the expression, in the day that the Eternal G-d made, refers covertly to the word bereshith (in the beginning).²⁸⁰See Ramban above at the end of 1:1 and see also Note 64.

אלה תולדות השמים והארץ בהבראם. These are the plants and the living creatures which had been the potential derivatives of heaven and earth already at the time when heaven and earth were first created. The potential ability for heaven and earth to produce the inhabitants of their respective domains was inherent in their respective composition from the first moment of their existence. When the Torah, in its very first verse, wrote the words את השמים and את הארץ, this was already an allusion to the additional factors which had been created together with heaven and earth, i.e. their ability to produce their respective derivatives.