The first verse of the Torah contains two words that English translations almost always skip. The Hebrew et (את) appears twice in Genesis 1:1 — "in the beginning God created et the heavens and et the earth." Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 8:1 records a legendary debate between two giants of early rabbinic Judaism over what those particles mean.
The two schools
R. Ishmael, the second-century sage, read the Torah plainly. Hebrew grammar uses et as a direct object marker, and Hebrew uses gam (also) and akh (but) as ordinary connective words. No hidden meanings. Just grammar.
His colleague R. Akiva disagreed sharply. For Akiva, every word in the Torah carried meaning, because the Torah was not ordinary speech. Particles that seemed grammatical served as signals — akh and raq marked exclusions, while et and gam marked inclusions. Each tiny word pointed to something beyond its literal function.
The Genesis test case
R. Ishmael challenged R. Akiva on Genesis 1:1. "The verse does not say 'in the beginning God created heaven and earth.' It says et the heaven and et the earth. The et is just a grammatical clarification — it tells you what the direct object is."
R. Akiva pushed back. He cited Deuteronomy 32:47: "For it is no empty thing for you" — meaning the Torah itself. If the Torah contains nothing empty, then et cannot be merely grammatical filler. Every word must carry weight.
Then he made his positive argument. If the Torah had simply said "heaven and earth," readers might have concluded that heaven and earth were co-creators alongside God — two deities named in parallel. But the double et changes the picture. Et the heavens — meaning the heavens plus everything that belongs to them. Et the earth — meaning the earth plus everything that belongs to it. Sun, stars, trees, animals, humans. All included. All direct objects of a single divine verb.
Why this protects monotheism
R. Akiva's reading is theological as well as grammatical. Without the et, the Hebrew phrase could be parsed as a list of co-creators. With the et, it becomes unambiguous: God created, and everything else — heavens, earth, and all they contain — was created. One Actor, many objects.
The Greek translator Aquila, a second-century convert who studied under R. Akiva, followed this same principle in his Greek rendering of Genesis 1:1. Where other translations dropped the et, Aquila rendered it with a Greek preposition meaning "together with." The principle survived into the language of the Gentiles.
The larger method
This debate between Ishmael and Akiva is one of the foundational methodological arguments in <a href='/categories/midrash-rabbah.html'>rabbinic exegesis</a>. Do you read the Torah the way you read any text — with normal grammar and ordinary syntax? Or do you read it as a document in which every letter is loaded, every particle intentional?
Jewish tradition ultimately preserved both approaches. But it was Akiva's method that dominated the midrashic imagination.
The takeaway: in the Torah, no word is wasted. Two Hebrew letters — aleph and tav, the first and last letters of the alphabet — hide a whole theology of creation. The et ensures that God stands alone as Creator, and everything else is gathered under His verb.