The Primordial Torah

Rabbi Hoshaya the Great opened (Proverbs 8:30): "Then I was beside Him as a nursling, and I was His delight day by day, etc." The word read here as "amon" can mean tutor; it can mean covered; it can mean hidden; and there are those who say "amon" means great. "Amon" as tutor (nursing-guardian), as you say (Numbers 11:12): "as a nurse carries the suckling child." "Amon" as covered, as you say (Lamentations 4:5): "those who were brought up in scarlet, etc." "Amon" as hidden, as you say (Esther 2:7): "and he raised Hadassah." "Amon" as great, as you say (Nahum 3:8): "Are you better than No-amon?" which we translate in Aramaic as: "Are you better than great Alexandria that sits among the rivers?" Another interpretation: "amon" means craftsman (read amon as oman, artisan). The Torah says: I was the working instrument of the Holy One, blessed be He. In the way of the world, a king of flesh and blood who builds a palace does not build it by his own knowledge but by the knowledge of a craftsman; and the craftsman does not build it by his own knowledge but has scrolls and tablets, to know how to make the chambers and how to make the doorways. So too the Holy One, blessed be He, looked into the Torah and created the world. And the Torah says, "In the beginning God created" (Genesis 1:1), and "beginning" means nothing other than the Torah, as you say (Proverbs 8:22): "The LORD made me as the beginning of His way."