1105 – 1849 4 witnesses
“ונאמר אל אדני WE SAID TO MY LORD — we kept nothing back from you (Genesis Rabbah 93:8). ואחיו מת AND HIS BROTHER IS DEAD — He uttered this untruth out of fear. He thought: if I tell him that he is alive he may say “Bring him to me”. לבדו לאמו [HE] ALONE [IS LEFT] OF HIS MOTHER — of that mother he has no other brother.”
“AND HIS FATHER LOVES HIM. More than all of us, and thus he did not let him come with us initially. And that is why he was not with us, and not that we sent him to spy, as you thought.”
“And we said unto my lord, we have a father,.... Yet living in the land of Canaan: an old man; being one hundred and thirty years of age, Gen 47:9, and a child of his old age; who was born when he was near an hundred years of age: and a little one; not in stature, but in age, being the youngest son, and much younger than they: so they represented him, on that account, and because he was tenderly brought up with his father, and not inured to business and hardship, and so unfit to travel: and his brother is dead; meaning Joseph: so they thought him to be, having not heard of him for twenty two years or more, and they had so often said he was dead, or suggested as much, that they at length believed he was: and he alone is left of his mother; the only child left of his mother Rachel: and his father loveth him; being his youngest son, and the only child of his beloved Rachel, and therefore most dear unto him.”
“Is left of, (habet mater.) Rachel had been dead about twenty-four years. (Haydock)”
The in-app commentary runs from the Fathers to the early-modern record, then stops — that's where the public-domain sources end, not where the reading does. For the modern reading, follow the sources directly.