That, according to some powerful Jewish mystical traditions, is how the universe came to be. Not a slow burn, not a gradual unfolding, but a single, instantaneous burst of divine energy.
Did you ever stop to wonder how God created the universe? The Torah tells us, "God spoke all these words, saying…" (Exodus 20:1). But what if all those words, the entire blueprint of existence, were spoken at once? That's the mind-blowing idea we're exploring. Heaven, earth, stars, oceans, every blade of grass—all of it, boom!—created in a single, unified divine utterance.
According to this understanding, there was no "before" or "after" in creation, everything sprang into existence simultaneously. The universe, in its raw, unformed potential, was present in that one divine word. But here's the twist: while everything existed in that instant, it lacked order. It was like a cosmic soup, a swirling chaos of potential.
So, what about the six days of Creation that we read about in Genesis? Well, according to this view, those days weren't about creating something from nothing. Instead, they were about God bringing order to the already-existing universe. On the first day, God separated light from darkness. On the second, He divided the waters. The six days were a process of refinement, of sculpting and shaping the raw material of creation.
This idea comes to us from Rabbi Hayim ben Attar (1696-1743), a fascinating scholar best known for his commentary on the Torah, the Or ha-Hayim ("The Light of Life"). He finds support for this concept in the verse about the Sabbath: "For on it (the Sabbath) He rested from all His work which He had created in order to complete it" (Genesis 2:2). Rabbi Hayim ben Attar interprets this verse as meaning that the world had already been created – in that single utterance. The six days were about perfecting it.
Think about it. The verse doesn't say God rested from all the work he made, but from all the work he had created in order to complete it. It’s a subtle but powerful difference.
There's a parallel tradition, too. The Mishnat Rabbi Eliezer tells us that God spoke the Ten Commandments in a single utterance. Imagine the sheer force, the concentrated power of that moment! If God could deliver the foundational laws of morality in a single breath, is it so far-fetched to imagine the entire universe being created in a similar way?
So, what does this all mean? It suggests a radical interconnectedness to everything. We are all, in a sense, part of that original utterance. We are all fragments of that initial burst of divine creativity, still being shaped and refined, still finding our place in the grand cosmic order. Perhaps, then, our task is to continue the work of creation, to bring order and meaning to our own lives and to the world around us, remembering that we are all connected by that single, powerful, and eternal word.