(3) And God said: ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light. (4) And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
(14) God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate day from night; they shall serve as signs for the set times—the days and the years; (15) and they serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth.” And it was so. (16) God made the two great lights, the greater light to dominate the day and the lesser light to dominate the night, and the stars. (17) And God set them in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth, (18) to dominate the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that this was good. (19) And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
ואור ביום ראשון איברי,והכתיב ויתן אותם אלהים ברקיע השמים וכתיב ויהי ערב ויהי בקר יום רביעי,כדר' אלעזר,דא"ר אלעזר,אור שברא הקב"ה ביום ראשון אדם צופה בו מסוף העולם ועד סופו כיון שנסתכל הקב"ה בדור המבול ובדור הפלגה וראה שמעשיהם מקולקלים עמד וגנזו מהן שנאמר (איוב לח, טו) וימנע מרשעים אורם,ולמי גנזו לצדיקים לעתיד לבא
Was light created on the first day? But isn't is written, "and God set them in the firmament of the heaven [to give light upon the earth]," and isn't is written, "and there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day." (Genesis 1:19)?
It is like R. Elazar, For R. Elazar said: "The light which the Holy One, blessed be He, created on the first day, Adam saw through it from one end of the world to the other. When the Holy One, blessed be God, peered at the generation of the Flood and the generation of the Dispersion, and saw that their actions were destructive, God stood up and hid [the light] from them, as it is said: "And from the wicked their light is withheld." (Job 38:15)
And for whom did God take it away? For the righteous of the time to come...
God made a separation in the illumination of the light, that it should not flow or give off light except for the righteous, whose actions draw it down and make it shine. However, the actions of the evil block it, leaving them in darkness, and this itself was the hiding of the light.
R’ Elazar of Worms says in his work ‘the Rokeach’ that the thirty-six candles we light on Hannukah parallel the thirty-six hours for which the original light of the six days of creation shone, before it was hidden away. If this is so, then it appears that each Hannukah candle draws from the or haganuz, the hidden light of creation, and gives light in great darkness, as our Sages hinted with their description of the or haganuz as a light which shined from one end of the world to the other (Chagigah 12a). There is no hiddenness or obscurity (he’elem) before this light. We call the world (olam) which obscures (ma’alim) and hides this light ‘the natural,’ but the original light of creation shone through all these layers of concealment and it was hidden away for the righteous; on this it is written “A light shines for the upright in the darkness…” (Psalms 112:4) It is also written “The people that walked in darkness have seen a brilliant light…” (Isaiah 9:1) The generation which lived in the days of the wicked Greeks walked in darkness, as the Sages taught “darkness refers to Greece which darkened the eyes of Israel…” (Bereshit Raba 2:4), nevertheless they served God with a spirit of self-sacrifice even in the midst of this darkness. That is why they merited that the hidden light shine for them, and some of its illumination remains, radiating from year to year even in these lowly times. Every servant of God must rejoice during these days when a touch of the hidden light illuminates Divine service. The primary intent of the wicked ones was to make us forget God’s laws and Torah, and the Hannukah lights bring us to remembrance.
אמר אביי: לא פחות עלמא מתלתין ושיתא צדיקי דמקבלי אפי שכינה בכל דרא, שנאמר: "אשרי כל חוכי לו." לו בגימטריא תלתין ושיתא.
Apropos that verse, Abaye said: The world has no fewer than thirty-six righteous people in each generation who greet the Divine Presence, as it is stated: “Happy are all they who wait for Him [lo]” (Isaiah 30:18). The numerical value of lo, spelled lamed vav, is thirty-six.
Dr. Erin Leib Smokler
The commandment of candlelighting on Chanukah is necessarily and essentially at the time of sunset, at the time when darkness covers the land and a fog [descends on] the nation; when the heart contracts from loneliness and despair and it looks like there is no ray of hope or spark of light, and like brighter times have ended. Just then must Chanukah candles be lit to raise light, to banish despair, and to draw in confidence and faithfulness.