Erev tov shalom Rabbi,
Rasji explains that the word “jom” has many different meanings, as for instance ‘a thousand years’ and therefore concludes that HasHem probably not created the universe and world in six days but in a much longer time. The essence of the Torah is not to tell us HOW HasHem created the universe and world but to let us know WHO created all the wonders. I can agree with this opinion of Rasji. Nevertheless this brings me to another question (and to my suprise and happiness my son of 15 whom I explained the opinion of Rasji asked me exact the same question) and that question is: if indeed the words “jom” has to be explained in a different way and therefore HasHem indeed did not create the world in six days, how do we have to understand the by HasHem himself given demand to work six days and keep Shabbath on the seventh day. It seems obvious that there is a clear connection between the days that HasHem needed to create the universe and world and the day he needed to rest on the one hand and his demand for humans to have a rhythm of seven days on the other hand. Isn’t that a proof that the joms mentioned in Bereshiet has to be taken literal in the most direct meaning ‘day of 24 hours’?
I agree with Rasji that it is maybe even trivial to know HOW and in how many days HasHem created the world and that the most important lesson should be that we believe and know THAT HASHEM IS THE ONLY CREATOR, but I the other hand I can’t believe that there is no connection between the six days of creations and seventh day of rest and the same rhythm of seven days HasHem gave us.
I ‘m (and my son also :)) very curious for the explanation of the Torah you can give and want to say in advance ‘ toda raba’ for your time and energy and ‘shlicha’ for my bad English 🙂
Shalom!
Frans and Max Janse
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