Here is a question only R. Isaac could ask without blushing. If the Torah is primarily a book of commandments, why does it open with Genesis 1:1 — a narrative about cosmic creation — instead of Exodus 12:2, where the first commandment of national scope actually appears?
The commandment at Exodus 12:2
Exodus 12:2 reads: "This month shall be for you the beginning of months." It is the first mitzvah given to Israel as a people — the command to sanctify the new moon and structure the calendar. Everything that follows, from Passover to Shavuot to Yom Kippur, depends on this verse.
R. Isaac's observation is preserved in Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 11:1. The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, a second-century halakhic midrash, in fact begins its commentary at Exodus 12:2, implicitly conceding the point. If Torah is law, then law begins there.
So why start with Genesis?
R. Isaac's answer reframes the purpose of Genesis. The creation narrative is not there to tell Israel how the world began. It is there to tell Israel — and everyone else — who owns the world.
His proof text is Psalm 111:6: "He has declared to His people the power of His works in giving them the heritage of the gentiles." The psalm links God's creative acts to Israel's eventual inheritance of the land of Canaan. If the question ever arose — did Israel have the right to that land? — the answer would be written in the first chapter of the Torah. The Creator of the world assigns its territories as He sees fit.
The polemical frame
Rashi, following this midrash in the eleventh century, makes the argument explicit. The nations of the world might accuse Israel of being conquerors, usurpers who took land that belonged to others. The Torah's answer, embedded in its opening verse, is that the land belonged to no one until God assigned it. He gave it to the Canaanites for a time, and then gave it to Abraham's descendants.
This is not a justification of conquest by force. It is a theology of divine allotment. The same God who made the world distributes its territories, and the Torah's creation account provides the foundation for Israel's claim.
The deeper purpose
But R. Isaac's teaching also suggests something larger. The Torah opens with creation because the <a href='/categories/midrash-aggadah.html'>Jewish covenant</a> is not just a legal contract between God and one people. It is embedded in a cosmic framework. The same God who said "let there be light" later said "this month shall be for you." Ritual time is continuous with cosmic time. Israel's calendar is a small inset within the vast calendar of creation itself.
The takeaway: the Torah could have been a law book. Instead, it is a law book that opens with the making of the world. That opening is not literary flourish — it is the foundation on which every commandment afterward rests.