What does Rashi mean when he says “and almost that he had not been slaughtered”?
(23,2) “And Sarah died in Kiryas Arba, which is Chevron, in the land of Canaan, and Avrohom came to eulogize Sarah and to weep for her.”
Rashi explains that the account of Sarah’s death was put next to the account of the binding of Yitzchok because after being told about the binding, how her son had been prepared for slaughter and almost that he had not been slaughtered, her soul flew away from her and she died.
The words of Rashi “how her son had been prepared for slaughter and almost that he had not been slaughtered” seem to make little sense. But what Rashi means is that “after being told about the binding” - after someone came from Mount Moriah to tell Sarah about the binding and told her that “her son had been prepared for slaughter” and who had intended to go on to say that he had been saved and had not been slaughtered, “and almost that he had not been slaughtered” - just before he was able to tell her that he had not been slaughtered the shock that she experienced because of his opening words caused her soul to fly away and she died.
How did Rashi know that the Torah is telling us that no man had been intimate with Rivkah either naturally or unnaturally?
(24,16) “The maiden was very beauiful, a virgin, and no man had been intimate with her.”
It is puzzling why the Torah needed to state that she was a virgin - since Chazal teach us that Rivkah was three years old when she married Yitzchok and this took place even earlier, it is obvious that she was a virgin, because even if she had been intimate with a man her virginity would have returned, as we learn from the gemora Kesubos and the gemora Niddah!
We could answer this by saying that this is why the Torah also writes that “no man had been intimate with her”, to teach us that she did not even have the stigma of having been intimate with a man even though her virginity would have returned. No man had been intimate with her at all.
But if this is the correct understanding of this phrase it would still leave us with a difficulty, because the Torah could have just written “no man had been intimate with her”, and then there would have been no need to state that she was a virgin.
Now we can understand why Rashi explains that the phrase “a virgin” means that no man had been intimate with her in the place of her virginity, and the phrase “and no man had been intimate with her” means in an unnatural way. He is explaining that the Torah first wrote that she was a virgin so that the phrase “no man had been intimate with her” becomes superfluous, and therefore it must mean that that no man had been intimate with her in an unnatural way. Because if the Torah had not first written that she was a virgin then the phrase “no man had been intimate with her” would not have been superfluous, and we would have understood it with its more obvious meaning that I wrote above.