Avos 5:1

בס׳ד

אבות ה:א

With Ten Divine Utterances was the world created. Now what’s the point of this teaching? Couldn’t the world have been created with only one Utterance? This explains the punishment of the wicked, who destroy a world created through Ten Divine utterances, And the reward of the righteous, who sustain a world created through Ten Divine Utterances.

בַּעֲשָׂרָה מַאֲמָרוֹת נִבְרָא הָעוֹלָם. וּמַה תַּלְמוּד לוֹמַר, וַהֲלֹא בְמַאֲמָר אֶחָד יָכוֹל לְהִבָּרְאוֹת, אֶלָּא לְהִפָּרַע מִן הָרְשָׁעִים שֶׁמְּאַבְּדִין אֶת הָעוֹלָם שֶׁנִּבְרָא בַעֲשָׂרָה מַאֲמָרוֹת, וְלִתֵּן שָׂכָר טוֹב לַצַּדִּיקִים שֶׁמְּקַיְּמִין אֶת הָעוֹלָם שֶׁנִּבְרָא בַעֲשָׂרָה מַאֲמָרוֹת:

        The Ten Divine Utterances of Creation are those creative acts of HaShem that are preceded by the phrase, vayomer Elokim, “and God said”.  Avos d’Rabbi Noson (B, 36) lists them in the following order:

1. 1.   “Let there be light” (Bereshis 1:3)
2. 2.   “Let the firmament appear” (1:6)
3. 3.   “Let the waters gather” (1:9)
4. 4.   “Let the earth put forth grass” (1:11)
5. 5.   “Let the lights appear” (1:14)
6. 6.   “Let the waters swarm” (1:20)
7. 7.   “Let the earth put forth living things” (1:24)
8. 8.   “Let us make Adam” (1:26)
9. 9.   “Behold, I have given you every plant” (1:29)
10. 10. “ It is not good for Adam to be alone” (2:18)

        The Talmud (Bavli Megillah 21b) rejects the last of these and includes instead the very first lines of the Torah: Bereshis bara Elokim, “When God began to create”.  This counting is followed by most meforshim as well, beginning with Rashi and Rambam.

        However we may identify the exact 10 Utterances, the point is the same: the world we live in can be reduced in its essence to the Divine Breath.  Everything that has existed, exists now, or shall exist, comes from a single source in the vital processes of God’s life as it issues into His Word, His Deeds, from the hidden world of His Mind.  The glory of being human, to paraphrase Rabbi Aqiva, (Avos 3:14), is not only that we participate in this Life of all life - so do mosquitos and ear wax!  Rather, our glory is that we can come to know of our participation in it and respond to it; that we can reshape and reform ourselves to be worthy of the One whom Rabbi Eliezer HaKappar called our original Shaper and Former (Avos 4:22).

        The mishnah’s question about these 10 Utterances is an important one.  If HaShem wished to create the world, why did he need more than one Utterance? We can answer this question only by moving more deeply into the implications of Creation by Utterance.  To place HaShem’s Speech at the center of creation is to emphasize the infinite value of the world as the domain of HaShem’s self-expression. HaShem invested His being in it not merely once, but rather in a series of pulsations from his essence.  Each pulsation brought forth a distinctive aspect of his being and inscribed it in the world.  These are the 10 sefiros or “dimensions of the connection of God and the world” that the Kabbalists have taught about.

        Now, if HaShem created the world through His Speech, and if human beings are mere expressions of that Speech, how can we have any impact upon the world created by HaShem?  The answer is the most stunning assertion of Yiddishkeit.  Namely: because God’s Speech comes to its ultimate expression in us, we share in its creative or destructive power.  Each of the 10 Utterances, each of the 10 sefiros, is in us and to a degree under our control.  Our means of control are the mitzvahs of HaShem, the 10 Commandments that contain within them the 613.

        And here is the answer to the mishnah’s question.  God created the world with 10 Utterances in order to correspond to the Aseres HaDibros, in order to increase the role of human responsibility for the fate of God’s creation.  Our transgression of mitzvahs introduces entropy - chaos and discord - into the economy of reality, unravelling the fragile world that HaShem created for us. Similarly, our performance of mitzvahs introduces unity and order into reality, bringing the world into closer correspondence to the eternal structure of HaShem’s will.  So HaShem created His world through 10 principles of reality in order to permit us maximum responsibility in opposing His will or in submitting to it and shaping ourselves to it.  It all lies within the range of our ten fingers - to do God’s will - and our ten toes - to walk in His paths of Torah.

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