אבן עזרא — וירק את חניכיו ילידי ביתו שמנה עשר ושלש מאות

Q — Chazal (in Bereshit Rabba, cited by Rashi) read "שמנה עשר ושלש מאות" as a gematria pointing to Eliezer alone (whose name = 318), with whom Avraham went out alone to rescue Lot. How does Ibn Ezra handle this?

A — Ibn Ezra rejects the gematria reading outright as derash, not peshat. The 318 were Avraham's actual trained warriors — "חניכיו שחנכם פעמים רבות במלחמה" — they had been seasoned in earlier unrecorded battles, hence the term "חניכיו" (initiates, trainees). The methodological line is unusually sharp: "אין הכתוב מדבר בגימטריא, כי יכול הרוצה להוציא כל שם לטוב ולרע" — gematria can pull any name out in either direction, so it cannot be the verse's peshat. Avraham went to war with a trained 318-man force, not with one servant. And per Ibn Ezra's reading of 17:23-27, those same 318 — plus Yishmael, Avraham himself, and all the men of the house — were later milled together in a single day.