Three Phases of Creation

Published October 18, 2009

Phase One is B’reishit. Specifically, the first two p’sukim of the Torah. In the beginning, originally, G-d created the Heavens and the Earth. “Before” (can’t really use this word) B’REISHIT, there was nothing besides G-d. Nothing. And B’reishit, He created something from nothing - YEISH MEI’AYIN. Not just something, but everything. All matter, all energy, all time… EVERYTHING. Phase One. And after Phase One - before Phase Two, what was there? TOHU VAVOHU, void and chaos, a primordial mixture of everything… without shape and form, yet.
This is what the first two p’sukim cryptically tell us.
How long ago did this happen? This Creatio Ex Nihilo? Indeterminable. How long did it take? Indeterminable. And meaningless for us to even speculate.
Then what? Phase Two. Beginning with the third pasuk of the Torah, we are told - still cryptically - that G-d said, Let there be light. This was the beginning of Creation of something from something. This was the beginning of G-d’s forming, shaping, organizing the world, the universe.
Phase two began a little more than 5770 years ago. Or a lot more than 5770 years ago if you insist that the days of Creation were “G-d’s days”, rather than ours.
By the way, “insist” is the wrong word in the previous sentence. If one would rather accept an alternate understanding of the Six Days of Creation, fine. But to insist that they couldn’t be “regular” length days, is to limit the power of G-d. Problem.
Discrepancies in the age of different elements of nature can be explained by the indeterminable periods of B’reishit, of the days of Creation, of the pre-Flood years, of the Flood itself. None of those “times” behave in a “normal”, “natural” way. We’ll leave this particular topic for another time.
For now, we are up to the end of Phase two - The Shabbat, right before which, G-d created many special things that would be put to use in the future (see Avot 5). The Shabbat upon which G-d “rested” from the “labors” of Creation. The Shabbat that He taught us about Phase three of Creation.
It actually goes back a day to Yom HaShishi, on which G-d not only created man and woman, but endowed all beings with the ability to continue creating and procreating - generation after generation, for all time. And He commanded us, with the first of the 613 mitzvot, to use that creative power. The final word of the account of Creation, tells us about Phase three. LA’ASOT!