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Ben Zoma's Query on Genesis 1:7(1): Was it what drove him insane?

(ProQuest: ... denotes Hebrew characters omitted (or Cyrillic characters omitted.))

IN GENESIS RABBAH 4:7(2), WE FIND AN INTRIGUING midrash regarding Genesis 1:7:

God made the expanse-this is one of the verses with which Ben Zoma3 shook the world. "He 'made'?" [Ben Zoma said.] "I am dumbfounded. Were they not created by His word [alone]?" Thus4 [is it stated in Psalms 33:6, which declares,] "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, by the breath of His mouth, all their host."

Put another way, Ben Zoma was challenging the Bible's right to have it both ways. Either God physically manufactured the expanse, as Genesis 1:7 states, or it came into being purely on His say-so, as Genesis 1:6 ...

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