Hidden Light (Ohr HaGanuz) of Creation

The Aish Rabbi Replies

Thank you for raising your interesting issue. The Talmud (Hagigah 12a) asks your exact question and gives two answers. The simpler answer is that God did in fact create the heavenly bodies on the first day, with His creation of the light. However, He did not yet arrange them in their respective places until the fourth day. In fact, the Midrash states that all the elements of creation were created on the first day of creation. Each was then put in its place within the earth or the cosmos on the appropriate day of creation (Bereishis Rabbah 1:19; see Rashi to Genesis 1:14,24).

The second answer given by the Talmud is that the light of the first day was not the light of the sun but a much greater and loftier creation – the original, unfiltered Light of Creation. With it, a person could see from one end of the world to the other. However, God foresaw that the world would eventually contain wicked people who were not worthy of enjoying such esoteric light. He therefore hid it away for the righteous in the World to Come.

We call this original Light of Creation the “Hidden Light” (ohr ha’ganuz) – as it was hidden away for the future. As is clear from the Talmud, it is not ordinary light but a spiritual essence too lofty for the physical world. It was the first entity God created outside Himself – with His very first utterance of “Let there be light.” This light is thus the part of creation which is so to speak “closest” to God – the most spiritual of all His creations (see The Science of God by Prof. Gerald Schroeder, pp. 161-165). Only the righteous in the World to Come will be able to bask in its glow. (The Sages state that this light was not hidden until after the first Shabbat of Creation (see Rashi to Bereishis 1:14).)

There is an interesting allusion to the existence of the Hidden Light in the wording of the Torah itself. The first light God created is called ohr, meaning “light”. By contrast, the verses discussing the fourth day of creation (Genesis 1:14-19) describe how God created the “me’orot” – which literally translates “from lights.” In other words, the heavenly bodies are not true light, but “from lights” – distant reflections of the true heavenly Light of Creation. They are energized by God’s true light, but they are covered and obscured by layers of physicality on the outside – so that they reflect God’s original light in highly attenuated form – enabling man to benefit from God’s illumination without being destroyed by its true inner radiance.

A deeper way of understanding the Original Light is as follows. We quoted above the Talmud’s statement that using the Hidden Light a person can see from one end of the world to the other. The idea is not that this light is physically brighter than today’s light. It is rather that it is so radiant and spiritually charged that it reveals reality as it actually is. It creates pure and unadulterated awareness – of everything in creation. It is the light of revelation – of shining God’s truth upon the world, revealing reality as it actually is and not as we finite beings perceive it.

Today, without this light, the truth is often hidden and God’s presence is badly obscured. We cannot even tell right from wrong. But the Original Light, a creation so holy and close to God, shines with complete and absolute clarity, leaving no room for falsehood or self-delusion. Today a person can act wickedly and either ignore it or somehow pretend his actions are justified. We can live with ourselves despite our flaws, almost pretending God isn’t really paying attention to us – since in our world of limited, physical light, we do not actually see God. However, in the Future World, with the true Light of Creation shining, there will be complete clarity – and knowledge of God. We will not be able to ignore or hide our faults. We will see our goodness and wickedness before us with complete lucidity.

The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 3b) writes as follows (slightly paraphrased): “In the End of Days, there will no longer be Gehenna. Rather, the Holy One, blessed be He, will take the sun out of its sheath and it will pierce. The wicked will be judged through it and the righteous will be healed through it.” Based on what we have explained, the meaning is that in the future, God will remove the covering from the true Light of Creation. (Recall that the heavenly bodies are referred to as “from lights.” They have the Light of Creation within them, but obscure it in layers of physicality. In the future, God will remove the “cover” from the sun – revealing His true light.) This intense light will bring complete clarity to the universe. The wicked will realize they have sinned and that absolute knowledge, with no way to hide from it, will destroy them entirely. Conversely, the righteous will now know just how good and worthy they were, and they will bask in their true and total knowledge of their closeness to God (as heard from R’ Yochanan Zweig).

(Some explain the Plague of Darkness in Egypt in a similar vein. The Sages tell us that while it was dark for the Egyptians, the Jews were bathed in light – and could even see where their Egyptians kept their valuables (Shemos Rabbah 14:3; Rashi to Shemos 10:23). Quite possibly, what God did was reveal His true light – at least to some small degree. This engulfed the wicked Egyptians, who couldn’t handle such unfiltered truth, in total darkness, while the worthier Jews benefited from this lofty light and could see piercingly – even discovering where the Egyptians placed their hidden treasures.)

(See Afikei Yam to Talmud Bava Metziah 86b, Nedarim 8b and Avodah Zarah 3a.)