Risto Santala: The light of the Messiah
God's first words in the Bible are: "Let there be light! And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good."
When we study the creation account closely we notice that it was not until the fourth day that God created the "two great lights", the sun and the moon. The Sages understood this too to be a Messianic allusion. The Midrash known as Pesikhta Rabbah, which was read from the 9th century on in connection with feast days, asks, "Whose is this light which falls upon the congregation of the Lord?" and answers, "It is the light of the Messiah". The Yalqut Shimoni, comprising catenae of Talmudic and Midrashic passages drawn up in the 12th and 13th centuries, adds to this exposition the words: "This is the light of the Messiah, as is written in Psalm 36:10,'In your light, we see light'".