ויהי יצחק בן ארבעים שנה בקחתו את רבקה. Rashi comments on this verse that Abraham on his return from Mount Moriah heard of Rebeccah's birth. Isaac was 37 years old at the time,etc. Why did Rashi have to inform us of these facts? They are spelled out in the Torah!

The usual answer given is that Rashi wanted to explain why Isaac had not married earlier. Our sages say that if someone is not married by the time he is twenty years old G–d makes such a person's bones swell up (Kidushin 29). Rashi therefore gives an accounting of all these years to show that Isaac had not been able to marry a suitable wife sooner.

When the sages in the Talmud speak about the bones of such a bachelor swelling up, they take into consideration that Adam described his wife as עצם מעצמי, "a bone of my bones” (Genesis 2,23), and that man therefore is not complete until he has been paired with the remainder of his bones. Failure to do this causes damage to his bones, leaves him physically incomplete. The reason the time limit is twenty years is that at that age a Jewish man is subject to military duties, and the Torah refers to him as איש, man (Numbers 2,2 et al). The relationship between military duty and fulfillment of the commandment to be fruitful is also alluded to in Genesis 1,28 where G–d links the commandment to "be fruitful and multiply" with the command to "conquer" the earth.

ויאהב יצחק את עשו כי ציד בפיו ורבקה אוהבת את יעקב. We have an allusion here to the well-known statement in Avot 5,19 that any love which is based on something material will not endure once the object upon which it is based disappears, whereas love which is not based on something transient will endure. Isaac's love for Esau was founded on the material things Esau provided, and therefore it could not endure. This may well be the reason the Torah describes Isaac's love for Esau in the past tense, i.e. ויאהב, whereas Rebeccah's love for Jacob is described in the present tense, i.e. אוהבת, an ongoing love.

This teaches us not to waste our love on material things but to concentrate it on enduring values such as Torah, מצות, etc.

הלעיטני נא מן האדום. There is a great moral lesson here. It teaches that man's food intake should be based on considerations of sanctity and modesty. When he eats, he should behave as if in the presence of his king. This is best illustrated in Exodus 23,11 where the אצילי בני ישראל, the elite of the Children of Israel, are portrayed as ויחזו את האלוקים, ויאכלו וישתו, "They had a vision of G–d and they ate and drank." Surely this means that they consecrated their eating and drinking to be such a sacred activity that they were fit to have visions of the Divine even then.

ויעקב איש תם. The fact that this trait plus the fact that he was a dweller of tents, are the only ones of Jacob's many marvelous character traits that are especially mentioned in the text teaches us to what extent a person has to endeavor not to be devious and not to engage in deceit and trickery.

גור בארץ הזאת ואהיה. Isaac accepted all his difficulties with the Philistines with great forbearance. Whenever the shepherds picked a quarrel about the wells, Isaac rather moved away than to feud with them. Even when it had become obvious, after he had been expelled, that his wealth had never been obtained at the expense of the Philistines, and the king and his Chief of Staff wanted to make a treaty with him, he not only agreed but prepared a feast for them. This peace-loving trait in Isaac is something that we must use as a model for our own conduct throughout life. We must strive to overcome our natural reactions when peace is at stake.