06 Becoming Torah Literate: The Torah Begins with The Number Two
How Much Thought Went Into the Fabrication of the First Letter of the Torah?
The Creator chose to introduce himself to the world with “beit,” the numeral 2. Why?
Everyone, who knows Biblical Hebrew, knows that the Torah begins with the consonant beit (ב). Perhaps, what seemingly goes unnoticed is the intense thought that an ordinary author puts into the first word of his composition. That inner voice hearkened my attention not only to the first word of the divine text, more precisely to the first consonant, and even more precisely to the first number. In Hebrew, the consonants also function as numerals. Beit is number two (2).
The consonant/ordinal beit is the second consonant in the Hebrew alphabet. Since it is also the number two, it is the first number that is divisible into two whole numbers. Beit is also the first ordinal consonant of six special consonants which have two separate, distinct sounds. These two variations of beit also have a slight variation in meaning. Generally, it is accepted that beit refers to a house or dwelling, however, according to the Creator’s perspective, beit relates to division, and the consonant name first occurs in the Hebrew word for “inside.” Noah was instructed to coat the “inside” and the outside of the ark with pitch. Notice that the word inside denotes a division between two aspects of a matter. The matter is the hull of the ark, which divides space into two aspects.
Therefore, the first word of the Torah should be spatially related and not time-related. The common translation of the first word of the Torah is “In the beginning,” a time-related term. More properly, according to the author’s perspective, the first word of the Torah should be translated as “Inside first of,” a spatially related term.
The first verse of the Torah is a summary of the matter of creation, which has two aspects: the heavens and the earth. The word “hashamayim,” the heavens means the far waters, and the second verse informs us that the face of the earth was covered with “mayim,” water. A few verses later, we are informed that the Creator separated or divided those waters with the firmament.
Returning to that first beit, it is a prefix of the word reshiyt, and the word reshiyt first occurs concerning a geographical place, the land of Shinar. That text should be translated as “the first of Nimrod’s kingdom was …” rather than the beginning of his kingdom. While the distinction may seem slight, the first is spatially related, and the latter is time-related. The Torah is a book which is concerned with the first of creations, and more specifically, mankind, which is the first of the image of the Creator on earth and culminates with the nation of Israel, who is the first of the nations to have the image of the Creator. However, if one assumes that Israel is the culmination of the Torah, then the goal of the Torah has become a man-centered misnomer. In the height of Israel’s failure in the wilderness, the Creator made his goal known. The whole earth shall be filled with his glory, and his glory is designed for all humanity. Israel is only the “first of” or the firstborn son of many sons.
That inner voice was directing me to the foundational principle that the Creator creates from the “inside.” Another name for the Creator is “the place,” hamakom, a perhaps the whole of creation began from the inside place. Perhaps the whole of creation exists within that place.