The Sages had a quiet problem to solve. The Torah insists that on the seventh day God rested from all the work of creation — yet the world is full of objects that seem to lie outside the ordinary chain of cause and effect. How did Moses get the Shameer? Where did the rainbow come from if it was only needed after the Flood? What about the opening of the mouth of a donkey?
The answer, given in Pesachim 54a and Avot 5:6, is that the Holy One prepared them in the last thin slice of the sixth day — bein hashemashot, the twilight of the first Sabbath-eve — so that they were technically part of creation but invisible until needed.
The Twilight Inventory
The list varies by Sage, but the core is remarkable:
The well that followed Israel forty years in the wilderness. The manna. The rainbow that would seal the covenant with Noah (Genesis 9:13). The letters of the alphabet. The stylus for writing. The tablets of the law. The grave of Moses, already dug on the slope of Nebo. The cave in which Moses and Elijah would each stand before the Holy One. The mouth of Balaam's donkey. The mouth of the earth that would swallow Korah and his faction (Numbers 16:32).
Rav Nechemiah added fire and the mule. Rav Yosheyah added the ram Abraham offered instead of Isaac (Genesis 22:13) and the Shameer. Rav Yehudah added the tongs — because tongs must be made with tongs, and the first pair had to come from somewhere.
Creation, in this reading, is not a closed event. It is a system stocked with hidden tools, released at the exact hour a soul needs them.