Genesis 2:4 says the heavens and the earth were created behibbar'am — "when they were created." But the Hebrew word is spelled with an unusual small letter heh (ה) in the middle. Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 16:1 reads that single letter as the key to how creation actually worked.
R. Abbahu's phonetics lesson
R. Abbahu, citing R. Yochanan, offered a startling exegesis grounded in Hebrew pronunciation. "He created them with the letter heh."
What is special about the letter heh? Try saying it out loud. The sound is nothing more than exhaled air — a breath passing through the throat. Unlike most Hebrew letters, heh requires no compression of the lips, no closure of the tongue against the teeth, no effort of the vocal cords. It is the softest sound in the alphabet.
R. Abbahu's point: "When one brings all the letters out from his mouth, he compresses his mouth; but when one brings the letter heh out from his mouth, he does not compress his mouth."
Creation as exhalation
If God created the world with the letter heh, then creation was not labor. It was breath. The same effortless exhale that humans make a thousand times a day was the medium through which the universe came into being.
This is the theological payload. "The Holy One created His world without toil," R. Abbahu declared. The proof is Isaiah 40:28: "He neither becomes weary nor does He toil."
The God of the Torah does not strain to make reality. The making of galaxies is, for Him, the exertion of breath through an open throat. The universe is a single divine exhalation held in place.
Why this reading matters
The midrash is combating two bad pictures of God. One picture imagines God as exhausted by creation, needing the seventh day as literal rest. Another pictures God as a kind of cosmic laborer, sweating through the six days of work. Both are wrong. The heh teaches that creation is the lightest possible act — a breath, nothing more.
If creation cost God nothing, then the universe's continued existence also costs Him nothing. Every galaxy, every species, every human heart is held in being by the same effortless exhale that brought it into being. To live is to be continuously breathed.
The letters of the divine name
Later <a href='/categories/kabbalah.html'>Kabbalistic traditions</a> would extend this teaching enormously. The divine name YHVH contains two hehs. The first heh, they taught, was the breath that made this world. The second heh is reserved for the world to come. The universe as we know it is the product of a single soft breath, with another held in reserve.
The takeaway: the universe did not cost God a drop of sweat. It cost Him a letter. The heh that exhales through your throat when you sigh is the same kind of sound that made the stars.