Komentaryong Sumisipi para sa Genesis 26:8

BNEI HA’ELOHIM. The sons of princes and rulers. This is the language of Rashi, and so it is in Bereshith Rabbah.⁴⁹²26:8. If so, Scripture relates that the judges whose duty it was to administer justice among them committed open violence without anyone interfering.

Understanding Yitzchak as someone removed from the world can also help us understand a seemingly shocking, though quite likely, understanding of the text, wherein Yitzchak and Rivka appear to have marital relations in front of an open window (Bereshit 26:8–9). We are not told exactly what Avimelech saw through the window, yet we are told that it made him understand that Yitzchak and Rivka were really husband and wife and not brother and sister as he was previously told. That he saw them involved in physical relations clearly seems to be suggested by the Midrash (Bereshit Rabba 64:5) and subsequently endorsed by Rashi (Rashi on Bereshit 26:8). Understandably, many of the commentaries on the Midrash and on Rashi⁵Mizrachi, Levush haOrah, et al. try to explain that this is not really what transpired. Nonetheless, if we understand that Yitzchak was never really focused on matters pertaining to this world, the Midrash’s reading of this story makes sense. Just as Yitzchak doesn’t pay attention to other details of his physical existence, so too when it comes to conjugal relations he is not completely focused.

המשקוף, the upper lintel which is visible to all when one enters though the door. The word appears in a context of viewing something in Genesis 26,8 וישקף אבימלך, when the King of the Philistines, acting like a peeping Tom, found out that Yitzchok and Rivkah were man and wife. Commentators who consider the word משקוף as relating to sounds made when the door hits the frame owe us other proof of such uses of the word in classical Hebrew texts. [a swipe at his grandfather Rashi. Ed.]

But the Yevusi dwellers of Yerushalayim. There was a section of Yerushalayim²⁴The reference here is not to members of the Yevusite nation, as Rashi explains that they were descendants of the Pelishte king Avimelech. Cf.Rashi to Yehoshua, 16:63, and Shmuel 2, 5:6. entitled Yevusi. They were descendants of Avimelech,²⁵The Pelishite king (Bereishis, 21:32, 26:8). The patriarch Avrohom swore that he would deal kindly with him and his children and grandchildren. (Ibd, 21:23). Avrohom’s descendants were obligated by the oath as well. Cf.Midrash Rabah, Bereishis, 54:2. and they could not oust them because of the oath—until the arrival of Dovid²⁶When Avimelech’s grandchildren no longer survived. (Rashi to Shmueil 2, 5:8)—as his²⁷Avimelech’s grandson. grandson still lived, and he²⁸Avrohom had sworn. had sworn to him, his son, and his grandson.