משלי, פרק ח׳, פסוק כ״ו

Long before the physical world took shape, divine wisdom existed in a pure, spiritual state. As wisdom speaks of its ancient origins, it declares its presence prior to the very formation of the earth and its many landscapes. This period points back to the era before the third day of creation, preceding the moment God commanded the waters to gather and the dry land to appear [אלשיך, עמנואל הרומי], or simply before He made the earth at all [אבן עזרא]. The emphasis remains firmly on the fact that wisdom was brought into being long before any inhabited ground was formed [מצודת דוד, אמרי דעת].

When detailing the unformed world, the primary approach among commentators is to view the land through a geographical lens. The earth is divided into the main areas suitable for human settlement, such as thriving countries and marketplaces, and the outer, less habitable regions or outskirts [אבן עזרא, מלבי״ם, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. Conversely, another perspective understands this division in a deeply spiritual sense, where the primary land represents the Land of Israel, while the outer regions symbolize the rest of the world [רש״י].

Continuing its poetic reflection, wisdom speaks of the earliest dust of the inhabited world [מצודת ציון]. The primary approach among commentators views this as a poetic repetition, describing the finest, highest, and most visible parts of the earth's soil [רלב״ג, ביאור שטיינזלץ, עמנואל הרומי, מצודת דוד, אבן עזרא]. The idea of this early dust can also refer to a specific time, pointing to the era right before human settlement began [אבן עזרא].

Alongside the geographical understanding, a deeper approach sees the first dust of the earth as a direct reference to the creation of the first human [רש״י]. The dust used to form humanity was gathered from the site of the future altar. This location is considered the navel of the earth, the central point from which all the world's soil spreads and through which the earth draws its divine abundance. By highlighting that it existed before the creation of humanity and this central point of the world, wisdom proves that its true nature is not physical. It was not bound by material form merely to suit human dimensions; rather, it remains fundamentally ancient and purely spiritual [אלשיך].