Commentaire sur La Genèse 21:30

בעבור (supply the word זאת) — IN ORDER THAT this (where this, a feminine form in a neuter sense, as is usual in Hebrew, refers to the incident just recorded).

כי את שבע כבשות תקח מידי, this is similar to the procedure described in Ruth 4,7 known as חליצה, in which the widow of the deceased brother who has been refused levirate marriage by her brother-in-law removed a shoe from her brother-in-law. This transaction signaled mutual agreement. In the case of חליצה it signaled that the widow was now free to marry someone of her choice instead of being beholden to a surviving brother-in-law.

ויאמר...תהיה לי לעדה, “this gift that I am giving you shall serve as proof for me.”

The feminine form for “witness”... Rashi is explaining that לעדה means “witness” (עדות), not “congregation” (עדה). And it is written לעדה rather than לעד because עדה is the feminine form of עד.

כי את שבע כבשות תקח מידי, ”for the seven sheep accept from me;” because Avraham made this gift to Avimelech, G-d said to him: “because you have given him seven sheep, I will let your descendants wait seven generations during which his descendants will ruin seven locations in which the Jewish people will have their abode. They are: the Tabernacle in Gilgal, Shiloh, Nov, Giveon, and two permanent Temples. Furthermore the Holy Ark was exiled in the territory of the Philistine for a period of seven months during the period beginning with the death of the High Priest Eli. (Samuel I 6,1.) All of this is referred to in the Book of Psalms 38,20: ואויבי חיים עצמו; David meant to say: the three generations that Avraham gave away to Avimelech had to be paid for by his descendants with seven generations. There were seven generations between Avraham and Moses, and Pharaoh, a descendant of Avimelech was still alive. [The seven generations comprise Avraham, Yitzchok, Yaakov, Levi, Kehat, Amram, Moses.]

תהיה לי לעדה MAY BE UNTO ME AS A WITNESS The word עדה means witness in reference to a previous feminine form (in this case to זאת, this, which word Rashi supplied), just as (31:52) “And the pillar is a witness” (עדה the feminine form to correspond with the feminine noun מצבה, whereas the preceding words are עד הגל הזה “this heap is a witness” where עד is masc to agree with Gal.

In this instance, acceptance of the gift meant that Avraham had dug the well, owned it, as well as the land it was on.

They agreed among themselves that whoever appears at the well... [Rashi knows this] because otherwise, how did Avraham prove it [that he dug the well]? It could not have been through actual witnesses, for if Avraham’s servants had actual witnesses, why did they not make a legal claim before Avimelech?

כי חפרתי את הבאר THAT I HAVE DIGGED THIS WELL —Abimelech’s herdsmen quarrelled about it, saying, “We have dug it”. They arranged amongst themselves that the well should belong to him who would show himself at the well together with his sheep and at whose approach the waters would rise, and they rose at the approach of Abraham and his sheep (Genesis Rabbah 54:5).