Rashi Reader

"And the spirit of God was hovering" (Genesis 1:2). The throne of glory was standing in the air and hovering over the face of the waters by the breath of the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, and by His utterance, like a dove that hovers over the nest.

"That they had made in Haran" (Genesis 12:5). For he had brought them under the wings of the Divine Presence: Abraham would convert the men and Sarah would convert the women, and Scripture reckons it to them as if they had made them. And the plain meaning of the verse is the menservants and maidservants that they had acquired for themselves, as in "He has gathered all this wealth [literally, made this honor]" (Genesis 31:1), and "Israel does valiantly [literally, makes valor]" (Numbers 24:18) an expression of acquiring and gathering.

"And he came upon the place": Scripture did not mention in which place, but rather "the place," the one mentioned elsewhere, which is Mount Moriah, concerning which it is said, "And he saw the place from afar" (Genesis 22:4). "And he came upon (vayifga)": like "And it reached Jericho" and "and it reached Dabbasheth" (Joshua 16 and 19). And our Rabbis explained it in the sense of prayer (Berakhot 26b), like "and do not entreat (tifga) Me" (Jeremiah 7:16), and we learn that he instituted the evening prayer. And Scripture varied its wording and did not write "and he prayed," to teach you that the earth leaped toward him, as is explained in the chapter "The Sciatic Nerve" (Chullin 91b). "For the sun had set": it should have written "And the sun set, and he lodged there." "For the sun had set" implies that the sun set for him suddenly, before its proper time, so that he would lodge there. "And he placed at his head": he arranged them like a kind of gutter around his head, for he was afraid of wild beasts. They began quarreling with one another. This one said: Upon me shall the righteous man rest his head, and that one said: Upon me shall he rest it. Immediately the Holy One, blessed be He, made them into a single stone, and this is what is said, "And he took the stone that he had placed at his head" (Genesis 28:18). "And he lay down in that place": this is a term of limitation. In that place he lay down, but for the fourteen years that he served in the house of Eber he did not lie down at night, for he was occupied with the Torah.