Tanach · Rishonim on Tanach · Ibn Ezra · Torah
Ibn Ezra on Deuteronomy 24:1/אבן עזרא על דברים כ״ד:א׳
אכי יקח איש אשה. גם הוא חשובה כשרה. [ס״א כשדה]:
1WHEN A MAN TAKETH A WIFE. She is also considered fit.1. However, she is disliked by her husband. I.E. takes issue with Beth Shamai, which interprets some unseemly thing as a sexual transgression. See Mishnah, Gitten 9:10. Other editions read, she is also considered as a field (ke-sadeh). A woman, like a field, is acquired by a money transaction. See Kedushin 2a. Hence the law regarding a woman follows that of the field. Filwarg believes that I.E. compares a woman to a field in that both are seeded and produce fruit.
בחן בעיניו. שהיא הפך תולדתו:
2FAVOR IN HIS EYES. For her nature is the reverse of his.2
גומצא בה. ולא יוכל לגלות כי אין לו עדים והטעם או מצא בה כמו ומכה אביו ואמו:
3AND HE HATH FOUND.3. I.E.’s reading is And he had found. The problem is that the verse reads ki matza (because he has found). Weiser suggests that u-matza is I.E.’s paraphrase of ki matza. However, I.E. goes on to prove that the vav prefixed to a word sometimes has the meaning of “or.” It is a bit farfetched to say that I.E. intends to say that ki matza should be interpreted as u-matza, and that u-matza should be interpreted as or has found, because a vav sometimes has the meaning of or. It thus appears either that I.E.’s copy of Deuteronomy had u-matza or that I.E. quoted from memory and committed an egregious error. And he cannot reveal it,4 for he has no witnesses.5 The meaning of and he hath found is, or he hath found, as in And he that smiteth his father, or his mother (Ex. 21:15).