Page:Ginzburg - The Legends of the Jews - Volume 1.djvu/31

 Gimel would not do, because Gemul, retribution, starts with it.

After the claims of all these letters had been disposed of, Bet stepped before the Holy One, blessed be He, and pleaded before Him: “O Lord of the world! May it be Thy will to create Thy world through me, seeing that all the dwellers in the world give praise daily unto Thee through me, as it is said, ‘Blessed be the Lord forever. Amen, and Amen’” The Holy One, blessed be He, at once granted the petition of Bet. He said, “Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” And He created His world through Bet, as it is said, “Bereshit God created the heaven and the earth.”

The only letter that had refrained from urging its claims was the modest Alef, and God rewarded it later for its humility by giving it the first place in the Decalogue.”

On the first day of creation God produced ten things: the heavens and the earth, Tohu and Bohu, light and darkness, wind and water, the duration of the day and the duration of the night.

Though the heavens and the earth consist of entirely different elements, they were yet created as a unit, “like the pot and its cover.”

The heavens were fashioned from the light of God’s garment, and the earth from the snow under the Divine Throne. Tohu is a green band which encompasses the whole world, and dispenses darkness, and Bohu consists of stones in the abyss, the producers of the waters. The light created at the very beginning is not the same as the light emitted by the sun, the moon, and the stars, which