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Today’s Daf Yomi Question:
We learn that “Hashem summoned darkness” – does that imply that darkness is more than merely the absence of light?
Dovid Hamelech said to Hashem ‘You turned Olam Hazeh into light for me’ – which Rashi explains as referring to the time of Shlomo Hamelech. But was Dovid not already then in Olam Habba?
The point being made throughout this Daf is that אור is not referring to a noun, for if so it would surely mean day. This is how Rashi repeatedly explains the Gemara here. אורה is the object called light. If the phrasing of the Pasuk would be using the word אור as a noun it would mean the time of day that has light, it would not mean light itself. We answer in all these cases that אור is a verb, which means to shine. We say, when the morning shone, the starts that shine, etc.
In this case, as well, we say that the Pasuk is not referring to an object. Rashi explains that is saying that the shiner was commanded to do so by day, and darkness was put in command of the night. There is no darkener.
The Pasuk says יוצר אור ובורא חושך. Light was formed, since it is made up of something, but darkness was not formed, only invented. Before the world was created there was no concept of light or dark. Hashem created light/dark and made this happen by forming the world in this way that lack of light is dark. It is dark and missing, not just a lack of the extra light, as we would say by lack of rain. Similarly, hot and cold are made up of one factor. Lack of heat is cold, while no doubt both where invented.
Taking the example from hot and cold a step further shows us that there can even be a source of heat and a source of cold, while in reality the cold substance is actually sucking away heat. Here too, even if there is a domain of darkness, it doesn’t tell us what it is made up of.
The Gemara tells us elsewhere that David asked Hashem for a sign and he was told that there would be one but not in his lifetime.