In this week’s Torah reading, Abraham tasks his servant Eliezer with traveling to Abraham’s homeland (northern Mesopotamia) to select a wife for his son Isaac. Eliezer serendipitously meets Rebecca at a well and is taken to her family’s home. There he presents a marriage proposal, and in doing so he retells the story—previously told by the narrator—of Abraham’s assignment to him and of his encounter with Rebecca at the well. There are numerous differences between Eliezer’s account and the earlier one, and these have been subjected to careful analysis by such great rabbinic commentators as Isaac Abarbanel (1437–1508) and Samuel David Luzzatto (1800–1865), as well as by modern academic scholars. These differences, however, were either ignored or dismissed by the major medieval commentators, generally known for their meticulousness and their focus on the plain-sense reading of the text (p’shat). Martin Lockshin explains why:

The medieval commentators turned to p’shat in the first place because they opposed what they saw as over-reading of the Bible in classical Midrash [talmudic-era rabbinic exegesis]. They consistently dismissed what has been labeled the midrashic principle of omni-significance, the idea that everything in the Bible has to have significance. As Samuel ben Meir (1085–ca. 1158) often wrote, “according to the p’shat, there is no reason to analyze this further.” By this, he meant that, on the [plain-sense] level, nothing more could be legitimately read into or out of the text than what he wrote in his commentary. Samuel ben Meir often knowingly offered prosaic interpretations of biblical texts in order to demonstrate that not everything was significant.

Thus, it seems that the Jewish creators and strongest proponents of p’shat exegesis in the 12th century were so opposed to midrashic over-reading of the Bible that they on occasion under-read the text, as happened in the case of Abraham’s servant, causing them to miss fine points that were then left for later exegetes to discover. This investigation suggests that while it is problematic to over-read a text, it is equally problematic to under-read it.

Robert Clark explains why the resumption of hostilities is both just and necessary:

These latest Israeli strikes come after weeks of consistent Palestinian provocation; they have repeatedly broken the terms of the cease-fire which they claimed they were so desperate for. There have been numerous [unsuccessful] bus bombings near Tel Aviv and Palestinian-instigated clashes in the West Bank. Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are still held in captivity.

In fact, Hamas and their Palestinian supporters . . . have always known that they can sit back, parade dead Israeli hostages live on social media, and receive hundreds of their own convicted terrorists and murderers back in return. They believed they could get away with the October 7 pogrom.

One hopes Hamas’s leaders will get the message. Meanwhile, many inside and outside Israel seem to believe that, by resuming the fighting, Jerusalem has given up on rescuing the remaining hostages. But, writes Ron Ben-Yishai, this assertion misunderstands the goals of the present campaign. “Experience within the IDF and Israeli intelligence,” Ben-Yishai writes, “has shown that such pressure is the most effective way to push Hamas toward flexibility.” He outlines two other aims:

The second objective was to signal to Hamas that Israel is not only targeting its military wing—the terror army that was the focus of previous phases of the war up until the last cease-fire—but also its governance structure. This was demonstrated by the targeted elimination of five senior officials from Hamas’s political and civilian administration. . . . The strikes also served as a message to mediators, particularly Egypt, that Israel opposes Hamas remaining in any governing or military capacity in post-war Gaza.

The third objective was to create intense military pressure, coordinated with the U.S., on all remaining elements of the Shiite “axis of resistance,” including Yemen’s Houthis, Hamas, and Iran.