“The child grew and was weaned. Abraham made a great feast on the day Isaac was weaned” (Genesis 21:8). “The child grew and was weaned” – Rabbi Hoshaya the Great said: He was weaned from the evil inclination. The Rabbis say: He was weaned from his milk.
“Abraham made a great feast” – Rabbi Yuda ben Rabbi Simon said: [This means that] the Great One of all worlds was present there. Rabbi Yudan bar Masparta said: “The king made a great feast” (Esther 2:18) – the great leaders of the world were there. That is what is written: “As the Lord will return to rejoice over you for good” (Deuteronomy 30:9) – in the days of Mordekhai and Esther, “as He rejoiced over your fathers” (Deuteronomy 30:9) – in the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Rabbi Yehuda ben Rabbi Simon said: “A great feast” – a feast of all the great people; Og and all the great men were there. They said to Og: ‘Did you not used to say: Abraham is a like barren mule and cannot beget a child?’ He said to them: ‘Now, what is his gift [Isaac], is it not puny? If I place my finger on him I could crush him.’
The Holy One blessed be He said to him: ‘Why are you disparaging his gift? By your life, you will [live to] see thousands upon thousands and myriads upon myriads emerging from his grandchildren, but that man [you, Og] will meet his end only by his hand,’ as it is stated: “The Lord said to Moses: Do not fear him, for I have delivered him into your hand…” (Numbers 21:34). It is as Rabbi Levi said: A cradle was rocked first only in the house of Abraham our patriarch.29Babies used to be born strong enough not to require a cradle.
Isaac was the first child who required a cradle. That is why Og mocked his puniness. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Menaḥama said: Those sixty-two kings that Joshua killed, all of them were at the feast of Abraham our patriarch. But were they not thirty-one?30See Joshua 12:24.
It is, rather, like what Rabbi Berekhya, Rabbi Ḥelbo, and Rabbi Parnakh said in the name of Rabbi Yoḥanan: “The king of Jericho, one, [the king of Ai one, etc.]” (Joshua 12:9) — Why does the verse state: “One” [after each of the kings]? The explanation is that it refers to him and his viceroy.