Comentario sobre Génesis 35:26

אשר ילד לו בפדן ארם, the word yulad (instead of yuldu) occurs generally in the singular mode though applying to a number of births. The Torah speaks of all of these children having been born in Padan Aram although we know that Binyamin was born in the land of Israel, quite close to Bethlehem. The reason is that the Torah was concerned with where most of the children had been born.

אשר ילד לו בפדן ארם, “who were born to him at Padan Aram.” What is meant is that the majority were born there, seeing we have read just recently that Binyamin was born on Holy Soil in the Land of Israel

אשר יולד לו בפדן ארם, “that had been born for him in Padan Arom.” This statement begs the question that as we have just heard, Binyamin had not been born in Padan Arom?We have to understand the verse as meaning that Binyamin had been born as a result of Rachel’s having prayed to G-d to give her another son while she had still been in Padan Arom (Compare Genesis 30,23. This is why the Torah here, 7 years later, describes Binyamin’s birth as dating back to that time.) A different exegesis of this puzzling statement: Seeing that almost all of Yaakov’s children had been born while he was in Padan Arom, the Torah applies the Talmudic statement of רובם ככולם, “if the majority had been distinguished by a certain detail we view all of the ones referred to in that context as if they possessed the same distinguishing features.” We find this principle applied by the Torah also in Genesis 46,27, where 70 people are reported to have been brought to Egypt by Yaakov, although only 69 names are listed, three of them being Joseph and his two sons. The Midrash (B‘reshit Rabbah 94,9) claims that seeing that Moses’ mother was born at the border of Egypt, her birth completes the number 70.