Q: When Hashem created the world, what came first, the chicken or the egg?
A: It’s a big problem for the scientists, a problem they can’t answer. What came first? If the egg was first, then there was no mother to hatch it. But if the chicken was first, so how did the chicken come? It’s a problem for them.
And the answer is, both were first. Hashem said, “Let there be chickens sitting on eggs.” When the world was created there were thousands, maybe millions of chickens sitting on eggs at the very beginning of the world. That’s the only way to solve the problem. Otherwise there are too many contradictions.
When Hashem made the world, He made it ready, functioning. Right at the beginning of briyas haolam, He put metal into the earth; He put iron into the earth. Trees were growing and rivers were flowing and chickens were sitting on eggs. Everything was put there. Just like when Adam HaRishon was created, he didn’t wait for someone to come along and give him a pair of eyes. As soon as he was born, he had a pair of eyes and he could talk and he had a full set of teeth too. Same thing, so as soon as the earth was created, it had everything that it needed.
That’s what the chachomim say, that ̇יׁƒ ̆‡≈ר¿ב הׂ≈ ֲ̆ﬠַמ לָּכּו‡¿ר¿בƒנ ןָ ָ̇מֹו ּ̃¿ב (Chullin 60a). All of Creation came into being b’komasan; it means the world came into being as a fully functioning and complete world. And included in that is that there were old chickens and young chickens and chicks and chickens sitting on eggs too. ‡ָרָּב 'ה – He created,ןƒיַ‡≈מ ׁ ̆≈י – out of nothing; everything came into being immediately, functioning immediately. And so the world came into being with chickens sitting on eggs.
TAPE # E-171 (December 24, 1998)
