We come now to chapter 5, mishnah 6 (in some versions it is numbered as mishnah 8), the last in the series of "ten" mishnayos in this chapter. The mishnah opens: "Asarah devarim nivre'u b'erev Shabbos bein hashemashos" - ten things were created on the eve of Shabbos at twilight, ten things that were created in the final moments of creation, at the transition from the sixth day into Shabbos.
What is "bein hashemashos":
Bein hashemashos is the in-between time. Nowadays we generally define it as the period from sunset until three stars appear; that may be the intention here and it may not be. In any case we are speaking of a span of time, however brief, of transition: it is not yet Shabbos, but we are already inside the changeover. Hashem, who knows perfectly well that it is not yet Shabbos, created these things at the very last moment. Shabbos is our connection to what lies beyond, to the heavens, and these things too are connected in some measure to what lies beyond.
And there is more to it: Hashem wants the world to run according to the laws of nature, and over the six days of creation He created the laws of nature by which the world operates. He therefore did not want certain things to constitute a breach of nature, but rather to be part of the natural order itself. After all, the distinction between a miracle and nature depends on what a person is used to: when rain falls, nobody is amazed that water is coming down from the sky, because that is a fixed order; but when manna falls from the sky, it looks wondrous and astonishing. For this reason Hashem programmed these ten things into creation in advance, things that appear supernatural but are in fact part of the natural order that was already established during the six days of creation.
The ten things created at twilight:
"Pi ha'aretz" - the mouth of the earth that opened and swallowed Korach and his company. According to Rashi and other commentators, a particular spot in the earth was designated in advance to be that mouth waiting to open, and nobody knew where it was, and it opened in the right place at the right time. Others explain - and this is the explanation that fits the whole mishnah more comfortably - that Hashem embedded a principle into creation, that at a certain point in the future the ground would open and swallow Korach.
"U'fi hab'er" - that stone that traveled with the Jewish people in the wilderness for forty years and miraculously followed them wherever they went, in order to supply them with water. It is called "the well of Miriam," after Miriam, the older sister of Moshe and Aharon, in whose merit the people had water. Here too it was established and declared in advance, from the six days of creation, that this supernatural stone would accompany them in the wilderness.
"U'fi ha'ason" - Bilam's donkey, which spoke to him. Most of the Rishonim explain that there was no particular donkey that had existed since the time of creation, but rather that the possibility that this donkey would be able to speak was established in advance.
"V'hakeshes" - the rainbow in the cloud, which was chosen to be the sign and token that Hashem would never again flood the world, as related in Parshas Noach. The Ramban explains there that everyone agrees that the rainbow is part of the natural order: it forms when light, primarily sunlight, passes through water, and even from a glass of water one can see a small prism effect that produces a rainbow. It is simply that Hashem took this existing phenomenon and made it into a sign and a reminder that He would not do this again. There is even symbolism in the fact that the bow points upward and not downward, like a bow and arrow. This is no different from Yaakov choosing a mound of stones to serve as a sign, or from the ongoing sign of bris milah engraved in our bodies. The phenomenon of the rainbow was thus introduced into creation at the twilight before the first Shabbos.
"V'haman" - the manna from heaven that miraculously sustained the Jewish people for forty years in the wilderness. Hashem established within creation that it would bring forth this manna for that period.
"V'hamateh" - the staff of Moshe Rabbeinu with which he performed the miracles. The staff was made from a special material called sanpirinon, and the name of Hashem, yud hei vav hei, was engraved upon it. Pirkei d'Rabbi Eliezer brings a lengthy midrash about the journeys of this staff, which was created during the six days of creation: first it came to Adam, and from him to Chanoch, to Noach, to Shem, to Avraham, to Yitzchak, to Yaakov and to Yosef. After Yosef died, Pharaoh confiscated it and placed it in the treasury of his palace, and from there it reached Yisro, who stuck it into the ground in his courtyard, and no one was able to approach it. Moshe Rabbeinu approached and succeeded in pulling it out of the ground, and that was the sign to Yisro that he was the redeemer of the Jewish people, and he gave him his daughter Tzipporah.
"V'hashamir" - a tiny creature resembling a worm, the size of a barley grain, capable of cutting stone. It was used to engrave the names of the tribes on the stones of the Choshen worn by the Kohen Gadol. Some also bring that Shlomo HaMelech used it to quarry the stones of the first Beis HaMikdash, since it was forbidden to raise iron upon them. This creature existed from the end of the sixth day of creation and afterward disappeared.
The last three - the matter of the Luchos:
The last three items relate to the Luchos, those tablets that Hashem Himself hewed and gave to Moshe Rabbeinu to bring down after his first ascent to Har Sinai. The Luchos were, as it were, the handiwork of Hashem, and were made of a material that was something like a piece of the sun. They were large blocks: six tefachim long, six tefachim wide (an amah by an amah) and three tefachim, half an amah, thick. And there were two of them, so that their shape was rectangular and not like the familiar pictures in artists' paintings, with a rounded top.
The miraculous nature of the Luchos lay not only in the material from which they were made and in the fact that they could miraculously be rolled up, but also in the writing: the Ten Commandments upon them could be read from all four directions. The material was something like glass that one could see through, and from whichever side one looked the writing appeared straight and not reversed like a mirror image. And furthermore: certain letters, such as the samech, are shaped like a circle, and when you carve a circle into a block of stone the middle piece should fall out; this too was part of the miracle of the Luchos, that the center stayed in place.
"Haksav" - the writing itself, including the empty spaces inside the final mem and the samech that did not fall out.
"V'hamichtav" - the manner of the writing, meaning the form of the letters, which could be seen from all four directions.
"V'haluchos" - the physical tablets themselves, made of that wondrous material.
All of these were prepared and waiting from the six days of creation, and were actually made at Har Sinai.
"V'yesh omrim" - additions to the list:
"Af hamazikin" - the harmful spirits, negative spiritual forces that cause damage. It is brought that Hashem made them at the very last moment, in such a way that there was time to make their spiritual component, their spiritual essence, but not enough time to make their physical components; and therefore they have no body, and they are bodiless spiritual forces roaming about the world.
At first glance this is difficult: what does it mean that Hashem did not have enough time to make their bodies? Hashem is not bound by time, and He could have made them earlier. The answer, however, is a lesson for us: Hashem deliberately made the harmful spirits at the very last moment, so that, as it were, no time remained to make their bodies but only their spiritual component, in order to teach us that this is how it works for us with regard to Shabbos. A person is busy with his work, and when the hour arrives and Shabbos comes in, he must put down his pen and stop in the middle, even if his work is not finished - exactly as Hashem did not complete the creation of the harmful spirits and left them, as it were, half done.
"Ukevuraso shel Moshe" - the burial place of Moshe Rabbeinu, which was hidden and unseen, and no one knew where it was. The Gemara says that when people looked at that spot, they saw it as though it were somewhere else; it was miraculously camouflaged. This miraculous burial place was designated in advance from the six days of Creation.
"Ve'eilo shel Avraham Avinu" - the ram that served as a substitute for Avraham at the Akeidah of Yitzchak, whose horn was caught in the thicket. Here too there are those who learn, and this is the view of most, that Hashem designated in advance that there would be such a ram in the future. But others, and so it is brought in the Yalkut Shimoni, learn that this ram was created back in Gan Eden and has been going about the world ever since, and it is that same two-thousand-year-old ram that waited for Avraham Avinu. Many Midrashim were said about the ram and its significance, about its horns and about the bringing of Mashiach.
"Af hatzevas bitzevas asuyah":
This additional opinion is disputed in Maseches Pesachim. The tzevas is a pair of tongs. Someone who works with metal, like a blacksmith, needs metal tongs in order to work with the furnace; and since metal tongs are made of metal, who made the first pair of tongs? One opinion holds that there is no way to produce metal tongs without metal tongs, and therefore it must be that Hashem made a first pair of tongs back during the six days of Creation. The second opinion disagrees and holds that there is no difficulty here: one can pour the molten iron into a mold and let it cool, and once it cools he will have a pair of tongs in his hands. According to this opinion there is no need for tongs in order to make tongs, and the tongs are made by human hands.
To summarize: this is the list of the things Hashem created at twilight at the end of the six days of Creation. The central lesson that emerges from here concerns the nature of a miracle and the nature of the law of nature itself: one should not mistakenly think that something that repeats itself over and over is not miraculous, for everything is equally miraculous.
This is also one of the answers to the well-known question of the Beis Yosef: why do we light eight Chanukah candles, when there was oil for one day, and therefore there should have been only seven days of miracle? Among the hundreds of answers, the Beis Yosef also brings the answer that all of nature is miraculous, and the very fact that oil burns is itself a miracle.
The point, then, is that we must see the world as Hashem created it from the outset. Hashem runs the world according to His design and its natural order, but He is not, Heaven forbid, subject and bound to the law of nature; rather, He is the One who makes nature and determines how all the wonders of our world will function according to His doing - and all of this He did from the outset, already during the six days of Creation.