How Rebekah Was Chosen at the Well

Midrash Aggadah Aggadat Bereshit 43

Curated by The Jewish Mythology Team · Published January 5, 2025

Before the sun existed, there was light. This is one of the oldest puzzles in Genesis — God creates light on the first day, but the sun and moon don't appear until the fourth. The rabbis in Aggadat Bereshit treat this not as a contradiction to be explained away but as a revelation to be amplified. The primordial light was a different kind of light, hidden for the righteous at the end of days.

Micah gives the key image: "The remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many peoples like dew from the Lord" (Micah 5:6). Dew appears without source, without calculation, without human effort. The rabbis compare it to Torah: "Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters" (Isaiah 55:1). Torah descends like dew — not earned, not manufactured, but given to those who make themselves available to receive it.

The light created before the sun and the dew that falls from the Lord are the same phenomenon in different registers: a gift from before nature that sustains what nature cannot. Israel carrying Torah into the nations is like dew in a dry land — unexpected, undeserved, but life-giving precisely because it has no natural explanation. The rabbis taught that the hidden primordial light is preserved in Torah itself. Every page of study is a recovery of what was hidden on the first day.

Themes

Noah & Flood Abraham Patriarchs Jacob Joseph

Biblical References

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