Ibn Ezra was famed, not only for his poetry, but also for his brilliant wit and many-sided learning.

As a mathematician, as a poet, as an expounder of Scriptures, he won a high place in Jewish annals.

In his commentaries he rejected the current digressive and allegorical methods, and steered a middle course between free research on the one hand, and blind adherence to tradition on the other.

Ibn Ezra was the first to maintain that the Book of Isaiah contains the work of two prophets--a view now almost universal.

He never for a moment doubted, however, that the Bible was in every part inspired and in every part the word of God.