page_title: Bereshit (parashah)
section_title: Genesis chapter 2
hierarchical_section_title: Bereshit (parashah) / In classical rabbinic interpretation / Genesis chapter 2
caption_attribution_description: English: Adam &amp; Eve, Russian Lubok woodcut 1792
context_page_description: Bereshit, Bereishit, Bereshis, Bereishis, B'reshith, Beresh't, Beresheet, or Bereishees is the first weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. The parashah consists of Genesis 1:1–6:8.
  In the parashah, God creates the heavens, the world, Adam and Eve, and Sabbath. A snake convinces Eve, who then invites Adam, to eat the fruit of tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which God had forbidden to them. So God curses them and expels them from the Garden of Eden. One of their sons, Cain, becomes the first murderer, killing his brother Abel out of jealousy. Adam and Eve have other children, whose descendants populate the Earth. Each generation becomes more and more degenerate until God, despairing, decides to destroy humanity. Only one man, Noah, finds God's favor.
  The parashah is made up of 7,235 Hebrew letters, 1,931 Hebrew words, 146 verses, and 241 lines in a Torah Scroll. Jews read it on the first Sabbath after Simchat Torah, generally in October, or rarely, in late September or early November.
context_section_description: Rava (or some say Rabbi Joshua ben Levi) taught that even a person who prays on the eve of the Sabbath must recite Genesis 2:1–3, "And the heaven and the earth were finished . . ." (וַיְכֻלּוּ הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ‎, va-yachulu hashamayim v'haaretz . . .), for Rav Hamnuna taught that whoever prays on the eve of the Sabbath and recites "and the heaven and the earth were finished," the Writ treats as though a partner with God in the Creation, for one may read va-yachulu (וַיְכֻלּוּ‎) — "and they were finished" — as va-yekallu — "and they finished." Rabbi Eleazar taught that we know that speech is like action because Psalm 33:6 says, "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made." Rav Hisda said in Mar Ukba's name that when one prays on the eve of the Sabbath and recites "and the heaven and the earth were finished," two ministering angels place their hands on the head of the person praying and say (in the words of Isaiah 6:7), "Your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged."
  It was taught in a Baraita that when King Ptolemy brought together 72 elders, placed them in 72 separate rooms without telling them why, and directed each of them to translate the Torah, God prompted each one of them and they all conceived the same idea and wrote for Genesis 2:2, "And he finished on the sixth day, and rested on the seventh day" (instead of "and He finished on the seventh day," to prevent readers from reading that God worked on the Sabbath).
  Similarly, Rabbi asked Rabbi Ishmael the son of Rabbi Jose if he had learned from his father the actual meaning of Genesis 2:2, "And on the seventh day God finished the work that He had been doing" (for surely God finished God's work on the sixth day, not the Sabbath). He compared it to a man striking a hammer on an anvil, raising it by day and bringing it down immediately after nightfall. (In the second between raising the hammer and bringing it down, night began. Thus, he taught that God finished God's work right at the end of the sixth day, so that in that very moment the Sabbath began.) Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai taught that mortal humans, who do not know exactly what time it is, must add from the profane to the sacred to avoid working in the sacred time; but God knows time precisely, can enter the Sabbath by a hair's breadth. Genibah and the Rabbis discussed Genesis 2:2–3. Genibah compared it to a king who made a bridal chamber, which he plastered, painted, and adorned, so that all that the bridal chamber lacked was a bride to enter it. Similarly, just then, the world lacked the Sabbath. (Thus by means of instituting the Sabbath itself, God completed God's work, and humanity's world, on the seventh day.) The Rabbis compared it to a king who made a ring that lacked only a signet. Similarly, the world lacked the Sabbath. And the Midrash taught that this is one of the texts that they changed for King Ptolemy (as they could not expect him to understand these explanations), making Genesis 2:2 read, "And He finished on the sixth day, and rested on the seventh." King Ptolemy (or others say, a philosopher) asked the elders in Rome how many days it took God to create the world. The elders replied that it took God six days. He replied that since then, Gehenna has been burning for the wicked. Reading the words "His work" in Genesis 2:2–3, Rabbi Berekiah said in the name of Rabbi Judah the son of Rabbi Simon that with neither labor nor toil did God create the world, yet Genesis 2:2 says, "He rested . . . from all His work." He explained that Genesis 2:2 states it that way to punish the wicked who destroy the world, which was created with labor, and to give a good reward to the righteous who uphold the world, which was created with toil. Reading the words "Because that in it He rested from all His work which God created to make," in Genesis 2:3, the Midrash taught that what was created on the Sabbath, after God rested, was tranquility, ease, peace, and quiet. Rabbi Levi said in the name of Rabbi Jose ben Nehorai that as long as the hands of their Master were working on them, they went on expanding; but when 
caption: The Creation of Eve (1792 Russian Lubok woodcut)
exif: {}