Open the Torah to its first verse and you find God alone. No angels, no counselors, no assistants. The Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 1:1 — a compilation edited in the Buber recension published by Solomon Buber in Vilna in 1885 — pounces on that silence and turns it into a creation debate between rabbis.

The argument over day two

R. Johanan held that the angels were created on the second day. His proof was Psalm 104:3-4, which speaks in a single breath of God roofing His upper rooms in the waters (day two, when the firmament was made) and of God making His angels spirits. Same verse, same day.

R. Hanina disagreed. He argued for the fifth day. His proof was Genesis 1:20 — "let fowl fly above the earth" — because the verb ye'ofef (fly) is also used of the seraphim in Isaiah 6:2, who "with two wings he did fly." If angels share a verb with birds, they share a day.

Why not the first day?

Here the midrash reveals its real concern. Why did the Holy One deliberately withhold the angels from day one? The answer cuts against every mythology of divine committees: "So that the heretics would not say Michael was standing in the north with Gabriel in the south, and together they spread out the heavens and the earth."

The rabbis were drawing a sharp line. Creation was not teamwork. If angels had been around on the first day, someone would inevitably claim they helped. By delaying them until day two (or five), the Torah slams the door on that reading. "The Holy One created them by Himself" — as Genesis 1:1 says plainly: Elohim bara, God alone created.

R. Judah and R. Nehemiah on the pace

The midrash then shifts to a second debate. R. Judah reads the repeated phrase "and it was so" across six days as proof that creation unfolded gradually — a full work-week. R. Nehemiah reads "let the earth bring forth" (Genesis 1:24) as proof that everything was already potential in the first instant, and the six days were just its unfolding into visibility. Both positions are preserved. The midrash does not choose.

The takeaway: the question of when angels were created is really a question about who did the creating. Jewish theology has a single answer — God, unassisted — and the timing of the angels is arranged precisely to protect it.