Ibn Ezra on Ruth 2:17

One of my rebbeim called it the "strangest Ibn Ezra I've ever seen."

The verse says,

And she gleaned in the field until evening, and she beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley.

יזוַתְּלַקֵּט בַּשָּׂדֶה עַד הָעָרֶב וַתַּחְבֹּט אֵת אֲשֶׁר לִקֵּטָה וַיְהִי כְּאֵיפָה שְׂעֹרִים:

Ibn Ezra comments:

ויהי כאיפה שעורים. פעם אחת שאלני אדם, מה טעם באיפה שעורים. אמרתי לו, אין טעם לשאלה הזאת, כי הכתוב ספר מה היה. אז נקלותי בעיניו, ויאמר לי כי יש לו טעם, ואני החרשתי ממנו ולא שאלתיו.

והנה בא ביום אחד ואמר לי, כי יש לו טעמים הרבה.

האחד שראתה רות בדרך נבואה כי עתיד היה אחד מבניה להעמיד עמוד על שם בעלה, וטעם 'איפה' - צ"ו רמונים שהיו על העמוד, וזה בגימטריא 'איפה', ופירוש 'שעורים' כמו 'שיעורים' כמו 'שער בנפשו'.

וטעם אחר, 'ויהי' - שתי מלות, ארמית ועברית. והיא כאשר ראתה שיתלה אבשלום שהוא מבניה, והנה כ"ף עם אל"ף רמז לשנות אבשלום במותו. ואחר כך 'איפה שערים' - לשון רבים, בעבור היותו כבד עליו.
וטעם אחר, כי תחילת אות כאיפה עם תחילת שעורים הוא בגמטריא 'ישי' שהוא צדיק גמור.

אז שמח וישב לבו בקרבו.

And it was about an ephah of barley: Once, a man asked me what was the purpose of the "ephah of barley." I said to him, there is no purpose to this question, for Scripture [just] describes what happened. I became inferior in his eyes, and he said to me that he has a reason, and I was silent and didn't ask him. 

And one day he came and said to me that he has many purposes [for why it was mentioned]. 

Firstly, that Ruth saw by way of prophecy that in the future one of her offspring would stand up an edifice by the name of her husband. And the reason of "ephah" - 96 pomegranates would be on this edifice, and that is the gematria of "ephah", and barley (se'orim) means similar to "shiurim" as in (Proverbs 23:7) "sha'ar benafsho" - "he who calculates in his heart." 

And another reason is, "and it was" (vayehi), two words, Aramaic and Hebrew ("vay," and "hi," "woe" in Hebrew, "him" in Aramaic). And it was when she she saw that Avshalom, one of her offspring, would be hanged. And behold, the chaf and alef [of k'ephah] is hinting to how old Avshalom was when he died [i.e. 21]. And after this, "ephah of barley" - in the plural, because [his hair] (II Samuel 14:26) "was heavy on him" [and it caused his death]. And another reason, because the first letter of "k'ephah" with the first of "se'orim" is the gematria of "Yishai", was was a completely righteous person. 

Then he was happy, his heart settled within him.

What is happening here? My first impression in response to my teacher was that Ibn Ezra was mocking the man: "I read it as a mockery of the approach that everything has to have significance outside of itself, as if the Torah can't simply write how something was. His disdain for gematria can be seen in Shemot 1:7, וחלילה שידבר הנביא בגימטרון או ברמיזות."

We could also add:  Genesis 14:14, where he writes in response to Rashi:

וחשבון אותיות אליעזר דרך דרש, כי אין הכתוב מדבר בגימטריא, כי יכול יוכל הרוצה להוציא כל שם לטוב ולרע, רק השם כמשמעו.

"And the count of the letters Eliezer is by way of derash, for Scripture does not speak in gematria, for anyone who wishes is able to cast any name for good or for bad. Rather the name is as its simple implication."

The rebbe added that there is a nice lesson from the Ibn Ezra that even if you disagree with an approach to Torah, there is still a value in listening to other people's divrei Torah.

Another friend had a different, yet similar, approach. He looked at the Ibn Ezra's introduction where he describes his method of interpretation of Scripture.

In his introduction to the peirush on Chumash Ib'n Ezra draws a clear distinction between the midrashim of Chazal and what this fellow was trying to do (compare the third and fourth 'ways'). It seems that what he says there about people trying to find "sod" in everything may shed some light on this comment in Rut:

הדרך הג' דרך חשך ואפלה, והיא מחוץ לקו העגולה, והם הבודאים מלבם לכל הדברים סודות, ואמונתם כי התורות והמשפטים חידות, ולא אאריך להשיב עליהם, כיעם תועי לבב הם, כי הדברים על צדק לא חלקו, בלתי בדבר אחד צדקו, אשר כל דבר מצוה קטנה או גדולה, בכף מאזני הלב תהיה שקולה, כי יש בלב דעהמחכמת יושב קדם נטועה. ואם הדעת לא תסבול הדבר, או ישחית אשר בהרגשות יתבר, אז יבקש לו סוד, כי שקול הדעת הוא היסוד, כי לא נתנה התורה לאשראין דעת לו, והמלאך בין אדם ובין אלהיו הוא שכלו, וכל דבר שהדעת לא תכחישנו, כפשוטו ומשפטו נפרשנו, ונעמידנו על מתכונתו, ונאמין כי ככה אמתו, ולא נגששקיר כעורים, ולפי צרכינו נמשוך הדברים, ולמה נהפוך הנראים לנסתרים? ואם יש מקומות שהם באמת נחברים, ושניהם נאמנים ברורים, מהם בגופות ומהםמחשבות, כמלת בשר וערלת לבות. ובעץ הדעת סוד ינעם, גם הדברים הם אמת כמשמעם. ואם יש איש לא יכילו זה רעיוניו, אם הוא חכם יפקח את עיניו, כי ימצא בתולדות רבים נוצרים כנחירים והלשון והרגלים לב' דברים:

In the bolded part he argues that the most important part of this approach is that everything is weighed against the "da'at" that's in the heart. From the hemshech it really sounds like he is talking about some kind of common sense/intuition which a person has to sense whether something is reasonably pashut or not. Only if One senses with the 'da'at shebalev' that something is simply not to be interpreted as pshat should one make recourse to 'sod'.

I'm not sure if this diyuk can hold water but perhaps we can compare this discussion to the last few words of Ibn Ezra in Rut: .
 אז שמח וישב לבו בקרבו

These words in the masculine are obviously not referring back to Rut's ruach hakodesh but rather to the man from the story. Perhaps the point is that Ibn Ezra's "shikul hada'at" led him to conclusion that this pasuk was simply presenting with background information about the story whereas this other fellow's feeling was that there must be some larger purpose for the inclusion of the measurement of wheat that Rut was able to gather which led him to his own conclusions. If we look at it this way then presenting this anecdote may actually be Ibn Ezra's way of saying "My feeling is that there is no problem here but this encounter made me realize that there may be other ways of looking at this." If you look carefully I don't think Ibn Ezra is actually sharp with this fellow like he is with other mepharshim in other places. 

It's also interesting that in the hakdamah Ibn Ezra doesn't rule out the possibility of explaining something with sod, just that it's unnecessary most of the time.

Agav orach this notion of "da'at shebalev" may help to solve another question about this Ibn Ezra. Granted that the pasuk is simply presenting information about the story, but isn't one of the fundamental issues of pshat why some information is presented and not other? It seems like not only the measurement but even this whole pasuk is actually unnecessary. Why does the megilah feel we need to know this? This question has nothing to do with midrashim or gematrias, and, in fact, both the Malbim and the Alshich present (very similar) purely pshat-based explanations for the goal of this pasuk. I'm certainly no expert on Ibn Ezra but I imagine it would not be difficult to find examples where he answers exactly this kind of question (i.e. Why is the pasuk presenting us with this information?). If so, why not ask the same thing here? (I think [you] the Rabbi asked a similar question about Rashi's seemingly inconsistent answering of certain kinds of questions). But if Ibn Ezra is working within the framework of "da'at shebalev" which is basically subjective then we can understand why he felt the need to explain things in certain places and not others.

This may all make no sense, but I'm hoping at least some of it is reasonable.