창세기 26:26의 주석

ואחזת מרעהו —as the Targum renders it: וסיעת מרחמוחי which means a company formed from his friends, the מ meaning from סיעת ממאוהביו. There are some who explain that in מרעהו the מ is part of the noun מרע — just like (Judges 14:11) “Thirty companions (מרעים)” in the narrative of Samson — in order that the word ואחזת should be taken to be the construct state to מרעהו (the company of his friends). But it would not be a polite thing to speak thus of a king — the company of his friends — for if this were the meaning it would imply that he (Abimelech) took with him the whole company of his friends and that he had no more than one group of friends. For this reason it should be interpreted in the first way (that אחזת is not construct). And you need not be surprised at the ת of אחזת although the word is not in the construct state, for we have similar cases in Scripture: (Psalms 60:13) “help (עזרת) against the adversary”, and (Isaiah 51:21) “Drunken, (שכרת) but not with wine”.

מרעהו ואחזת, with an entourage of his friends, as per Onkelos. The expression מרעהו occurs in this sense in Judges 15,6. The prefix מ in the word מרעהו is similar to the same prefix in the מריע ותוקע (Rosh Hashanah 33) [an unusual shift from the simple active mode kal, to the causative mode hiphil for basically the same activity, namely blowing the shofar. Ed.] as well as the מ in Jeremiah 21,4 אנכי מסב את כלי המלחמה, “The author quotes several more examples, as for instance, Proverbs 12,26 יתר מרעהו צדיק, ודרך רשעים תתעם, “the righteous enjoys advantages over his fellow man; the way of the wicked leads him astray.” [If I understand correctly, the letter מ is used transitively, although in this instance in the construction of a noun. Avimelech’s entourage רעהו was meant to give moral support to Avimelech in this ordinarily humiliating undertaking for him. Rash’bam goes as far as understanding the word ויתורו in Numbers 13,2 not as commonly understood as a verbal form of תור, “to tour, to traverse,” but as related to the word יתר from יתרון quoted in his citation from Proverbs 12,26. As to the fact that, if so, he word in Numbers should have been ויתירו instead of ויתורו, he quotes the interchangeable usage or ישוב and ישיב as well as יקום and יקים as examples where the hiphil is also used with the letter ו instead of the letter י for the middle root letter, עיו הפועל. Ed.]

[Dear reader, you will note that the author distances himself from the commentary of the Bereshit Rabbah on the following verse, calling it merely homiletical, and proceeds to substitute his own. I leave it to you to decide which approach seems more far-fetched. I have followed my practice of printing this commentary in smaller print than usual in such cases Ed.]
ואבימלך הלך אליו מגרר, and Avimelech went to him from Gerar, etc. Why did the Torah have to tell us where Avimelech came from? We know he lived in Gerar! Aware of this difficulty, Bereshit Rabbah 64,9 mentions that the word מגרר is to be understood here as מגורר, that the king experienced strange growths on his body which he attributed to his treatment of Isaac. Of course, this is an homiletical explanation only.. Besides, why did he have to take his general Phichol and Achuza along? If these people were merely part of the Royal entourage, the Torah did not have to bother mentioning it.