Why Was Humanity Created Last? Abarbanel’s Surprising Answer

The Torah begins with perhaps the most famous opening words ever written: “In the beginning, Hashem created the heavens and the earth.”

But Don Isaac Abarbanel notices an immediate problem.

If “the heavens and the earth” encompass everything above and below, what exactly was left for Hashem to create during the following six days?

For Abarbanel, this question opens the door to understanding not only the order of Creation, but also why humanity was created last and what the world was ultimately created for.

What Was Created “In the Beginning”?

Abarbanel insists that the Torah’s opening verse describes a genuine beginning. Hashem brought reality itself into existence.

He therefore rejects interpretations that, in his understanding, would prevent the first verse from standing as a declaration of the creation of heaven and earth. For Abarbanel, this principle is fundamental: Creation does not simply mean that Hashem rearranged or transformed something that already existed. Reality itself came into existence through the will of the Creator.

Abarbanel also discusses the Ramban’s explanation that the initial act of Creation brought primordial matter into existence, from which the upper and lower worlds subsequently developed. He raises a difficulty: If these were merely formless materials, why would the Torah already call them “the heavens and the earth”?

His larger point is crucial. We cannot understand the beginning of Creation simply by comparing it to the processes we observe in nature today, because nature itself had not yet been established.

Normally, one thing develops from something that already exists. A seed becomes a plant. An egg develops into a living creature. Matter takes on a new form.

But Bereishit begins with something fundamentally different: Hashem giving existence to that which previously did not exist.

So if heaven and earth were created at the beginning, what happened during the rest of the six days?

Abarbanel explains that Creation unfolded in stages. The foundations were established first, and the detailed systems and creatures that emerged from them appeared afterward. He therefore distinguishes, for example, between the creation of the heavens and the later making of the firmament.

This allows the opening verse to retain its straightforward significance while also explaining why the Torah describes a six-day process.

And the order of those days was not arbitrary.

Creation moves from simpler foundations toward increasingly complex forms of life. Plant life possesses nourishment and growth. Animal life adds sensation and movement. Humanity adds intellectual capacity.

Each stage builds upon what came before it while introducing something new.

Why Was Humanity Created Last?

This progression helps Abarbanel explain why human beings appear only on the sixth day.

It might initially sound like a disadvantage. If humanity is so important, why do people arrive only after almost everything else has already been created?

For Abarbanel, the opposite is true.

Humanity comes last precisely because the world has been building toward it.

He writes that humanity was created last “because it is the purpose of all beings, and its form is the final and most complete of all forms.”

Abarbanel describes Creation almost as a circle. Reality descends from the Creator through different levels of existence and then rises through the physical world: from the inanimate to plant life, from plant life to animals, and finally to humanity.

Human beings occupy a unique position because they belong to both dimensions. We have physical bodies and share many biological functions with the rest of the living world, yet we also possess an intellectual soul.

This helps explain what Abarbanel understands by the Torah’s statement that humanity was created “in the image of Hashem.”

He describes the human being as a kind of “small world,” reflecting within itself different levels found throughout Creation. Human beings possess natural powers of nourishment and growth, animal capacities such as sensation and movement, and, above them, intellectual ability.

But that intellectual capacity was not given merely so that people could become clever.

Its ultimate purpose is to enable a person to know the Creator, contemplate His works, develop the soul, and pursue wisdom.

This also changes the way Abarbanel understands humanity’s dominion over the rest of Creation.

The Torah tells humanity to rule over the fish of the sea and other living creatures. But Abarbanel refuses to believe that controlling animals could possibly be the highest purpose of a being created in the image of Hashem.

Dominion is not the goal. It is a means.

The Garden of Eden illustrates this idea. Hashem provided Adam with his physical necessities: food, trees, water, and a world capable of sustaining him. According to Abarbanel, humanity was not intended to spend its entire existence consumed by the pursuit of physical needs and luxuries.

The physical world was meant to provide people with what they needed so they could devote themselves to the higher purpose for which they had been created.

The question, then, is not simply what humanity can take from the world.

It is what we are supposed to do with the freedom the world gives us.

Why Creation Ends With Shabbat

Abarbanel’s explanation reaches its conclusion with Shabbat.

He distinguishes between two stages of completion. First, something must be created and brought to its proper form. Then it must begin functioning according to the nature Hashem has given it.

The six days of Creation accomplished the first stage. The world and its inhabitants were brought into existence.

With the seventh day, something changed.

Abarbanel explains that the natural order now began to operate. Created beings functioned according to their nature and reproduced. The world moved from the direct acts of primordial Creation described during the six days into an ongoing natural system governed by the laws Hashem had established.

He connects this idea to the description of Shabbat as the culmination of the work of heaven and earth.

In Abarbanel’s reading, then, Shabbat is not merely what happens after Creation is finished. It marks the transition between two modes of existence: the extraordinary process through which Hashem brought the world into being and the natural order through which that world would continue.

Even Abarbanel’s discussion of the sun, moon, and stars reflects this larger theme. He sees the arrangement of the heavenly bodies as part of an ordered system in which different elements of Creation have their own place, influence, and function.

Nothing is random. Creation unfolds according to an order, with each stage preparing for what comes next.

And humanity stands at the end of that progression not simply because we arrived last, but because our arrival comes with responsibility.

According to Abarbanel, the world was not created merely so that human beings could eat, work, acquire possessions, and exercise control over their surroundings. Our physical needs are meant to support something higher.

We were given an intellect so that we could recognize the Creator, contemplate His Creation, pursue wisdom, and perfect ourselves.

Perhaps that is one of the deepest messages hidden in the order of Bereishit: The world was prepared for humanity, but humanity was created for a purpose beyond the world itself.