Commentaire sur La Genèse 24:39

אלי לא תלך האשה PERADVENTURE THE WOMAN WILL NOT FOLLOW ME —The word אולי perhaps is written without ו so that it may be read אֵלַי unto me. Eliezer had a daughter and he was endeavouring to find some reason why Abraham should say that he must appeal to him (Eliezer) that he should give his daughter in marriage to Isaac. Abraham said to him, “My son is blessed and you are subject to a curse. One who is under a curse cannot unite with one who is blessed” (Genesis Rabbah 59:9).

ואמר... אלי, the word veulai is spelled with the letter ו missing, something which gave rise to an interesting aggadic interpretation mentioned already by Rashi. Accordingly, Eliezer himself had hoped to have his daughter marry Yitzchok in the event that the woman he found in Aram Naharyim would be unwilling to relocate in the land of Canaan. This is why he had referred to this possibility with the words אלי, לא תלך האשה אחרי, “to me (if) the woman will not follow me (to the land of Canaan).” The truth is that Eliezer related all the events exactly as they had occurred. We are not able to provide conclusive reasons why the Torah sometimes chose to write certain words defectively, (with a letter missing) or by adding a letter which could have been omitted. There are too many such instances for us to find satisfactory explanations for all of them. Eliezer related the events that had occurred to him in his conversation with his master as well as how G’d had arranged things after he had set out on his mission. His sole purpose was to demonstrate from the course of events that G’d loved Avraham so much that He had made his mission so spectacularly successful up to this point. G’d had responded even to his own prayer in exactly the manner in which he had hoped he would. As a result, the very idea of denying his request would appear out of the question, seeing that it was so clear that the entire sequence of events must have been engineered by G’d, personally. If we find some different nuances here and there in the events as reported by the Torah and as related by Eliezer, this is meaningless, just as different nuances in the wording of the Ten Commandments in the Book of Exodus and the Book of Deuteronomy are not meant to raise concerns as to their authenticity of either version. Everything until the word ועתה in verse 49 is quite clear.

אלי לא תלך, “maybe she is not willing to go, etc.” the word “perhaps,” אולי, is spelled here without the customary letter ו, which prompts Rashi to suggest that Eliezer had a daughter whom he would have liked to be married to Yitzchok.. Since he did not dare suggest this to Avraham, the first time the word אולי appears in this connection it is spelled in the ordinary manner; only now when Avraham was not present, and the whole matter was hanging in the balance, did the Torah hint to the reader about Eliezer’s secret aspirations.

It is written אלי. Eliezer had a daughter... You might ask: Above (v. 5), when Eliezer first said to Avraham, “Perhaps (אולי) the woman will not be willing,” why was it not spelled אלי there, for this exposition? The answer is: There, it is followed by, “Shall I bring your son back to the land from where you came?” There, it does not imply that Eliezer was looking for an excuse. Rather, he was asking: if she will not come with me, should I bring Yitzchok to them? But here, since this is not written afterwards, it is for this exposition. (Mahara’i) Another answer: After Lavan said to Eliezer (v. 31), “Come, you who are blessed of Hashem,” Eliezer thought: “Now I am blessed! Perhaps Yitzchok will marry my daughter.” Thus here, it is spelled אלי, for this exposition. But above, Eliezer was not yet blessed. The Maharshal answers: Eliezer never thought he would become Avraham’s in-law, because Avraham was blessed but he was cursed. Rather, Eliezer feared that once he told them he was under oath to take a wife specifically from Avraham’s family, they would extort him for a great sum of money. Thus he told them אלי, to hint to them that he had a daughter.

אלי לא תלך האשה אחרי, “perhaps the woman (that I chose) will not follow me. (to this land).” Rashi comments on this that it is remarkable that the word: ulay here is spelled without the letter ו after the first letter as we would have expected, and that this is a hint by Eliezer who had a daughter, that he secretly hoped that the refusal of a potential bride from Avraham’s family to move to the land of Canaan, might make his master Avraham willing to let her become Yitzchok’s wife. [Rashi bases himself on an interpretation by B’reshit Rabbah on why in the report of the conversation between Avraham and Eliezer on the same subject in 24,5 that letter ו is not missing. Ed.] It is difficult to understand why he did not write this comment already on verse eight in this chapter where Avraham had not excluded a marital union with the daughters of any of his three friends Aner, Eshkol, and Mamre, although they were Canaanites, and not slaves from Damascus, and Avraham had Eliezer released him from his oath in the event that a girl from Charan were to refuse to move to the land of Canaan. We must assume that Avraham had felt that the curse that rested on Canaan had already run its course, whereas the curse on Eliezer’s antecedents had not yet run its course, so that marriage into that family would be spiritually much more dangerous. B’reshit Rabbah 59,9, states specifically that Eliezer was a descendant of Cham, whose son Canaan Noach had cursed. In the book: Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, chapter 15, Eliezer is identified with Og King of Bashan, whom the Israelites slew in a battle during their last year in the desert. [My edition of Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer does not have this, and my research of a lengthy article about Og by Dr Admiel Kosman of the Bar Ilan university, also does not bring any source for that statement. Ed.] According to our author, the following is the text in his edition of Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer. “Eliezer has been described as the most senior servant, and added that he was a servant for evermore. When he did Yitzchok a great favour by choosing a wonderful wife for him, Yitzchok freed him forever. G–d then rewarded Og by making him King of Bashan. If this is true, why did G–d order Moses to kill Og as a punishment for defending his country against invaders? According to Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer he was a perfectly righteous man! We also know from the Talmud, tractate Sofrim chapter 21, as well as from Derech Eretz zuttah, tractate Sotah, 1, that he was one of only nine people who immediately upon drawing their last breath had their souls transferred to the spiritual hereafter. This matter was discussed in connection with a tradition that when Yitzchok first joined Rivkah in the marital bed, and found that she was not a virgin, he suspected Eliezer as having been to blame for this. He said to him: “may you live as long and enter paradise as you are innocent of my accusation!” In light of all the above, we must assume that there had been two Kings called King of Bashan, one during Avraham’s lifetime and another during Moses’ lifetime. It was the former who was so righteous. Each one of these two persons, once crowned king, used the title King of Bashan, seeing that all of Bashan’s king were called Og, just as all of Egypt’s kings were called Pharaoh.

אלי, “perhaps;” the word is spelled defective with the letter ו missing after the first letter. It suggests that Eliezer was using a certain amount of flattery for his hosts, indicating that if he had wanted to he could have prevented this union and his master might have chosen his own daughter as his daughterinlaw.

And one who is cursed cannot cleave to one who is blessed. I.e., Eliezer came from Canaan, of whom it is written (9:25): “Cursed be Canaan.” You might ask: Aner, Eshkol and Mamrei were also cursed, as they were Amorites, [who also come from Canaan]. The answer is: The curse was actualized in Eliezer, as he was a slave. Thus, he was more cursed than they. This resolves the difficulty of Re’m on v. 8.