Comentários de Citação sobre Gênesis 1:17

and the sky tells of the work of His hands The stars and planets, which are the work of the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He, and which are there, as it is stated (in Gen. 1:17): “And God placed them in the firmament of the heavens,” whence they proclaim His glory.

And the firmament telleth His handywork: – A repetition, for it is equivalent to The heavens declare the glory of God; for the heavens are called “firmament,” as it is said (Dan. 12:3) “as the brightness of the firmament” etc.; “and God set them in the firmament of the heavens” (Gen. 1:17); that is, according to the view of him who regards this as spoken with reference to the spheres. The learned Rabbi Abraham ben Ezra has expounded the firmament as meaning “the air.”

In them hath He set a tabernacle for the sun: – For the sun He hath set a tabernacle and a place in the spheres. The enumeration refers to the sun because he is the great light and because there obtains to men from him a greater benefit than from the rest of the stars through his light and heat, to men and to the rest of living things and to the plants. And when he says in them, he means in one of them, as he was buried “in (one of) the cities of Gilead” (Judges 12:7); and this (location) is the fourth of the seven spheres in which are the seven planets. He says in them, because these stars are fixed in the body of the spheres. And so it says (Gen. 1:17): “And God set them in the firmament of the heaven” and it does not say upon the firmament. And so, too, in the words of our Rabbis of blessed memory (Midrash Tanhuma, 2 Gen. v.), “The stars are fixed in the firmament like the nails which are fixed in a door.”