Tanach · Rishonim on Tanach · Ibn Ezra · Torah
Ibn Ezra on Genesis 41:54/אבן עזרא על בראשית מ״א:נ״ד
אוַתְחִילֶנָה. מבנין הקל פעל הכפל:
1AND THE SEVEN YEARS OF FAMINE BEGAN. Va-techillenah is a kal and comes from a root whose second and third letters are identical.92. This comment presents difficulties. Techillenah is obviously a hifil. If it were a kal it would be vocalized techullenah. Futhermore, this word is never encountered in the Bible in the kal. The entire comment is missing in Vat. Ebr. 38. Similarly S.D. Luzzato had manuscripts of I.E. which omitted this comment. For an attempt to justify this comment see Krinsky.
בבכל הארצות. סביבות מלכות מצרים:
2IN ALL LANDS. All the lands adjacent to Egypt.93 90:6, the hunger was in three lands, Phoenecia, Arabia and Palestine. The point is that if the hunger was in lands far from Egypt, how did they survive since they couldn’t come to Egypt to buy food?