[From the very first careful and in-depth reading of the narratives about the twins Esau and Isaac, the twin who caught our attention was Esau, not Isaac. We know that Rabbinic as well as Christian commentators tend to stereotype him as a man who gives in to his carnal desires, and because of the Edomites who descended from him, he is relegated to the ‘villains’ among biblical figures. But study the texts that characterize him and you might be more sympathetic toward him; in fact, the other twin who is more difficult to figure out and learn to like is guess who?
‘Heel’ and ‘supplanter’ are appropriate descriptions for Yaakov/Jacob, at least up to this point of ‘the twins’ narrative. The Rabbinic commentaries, understandably, tend to explain, rationalize and justify his and mother Rebekah’s deceptive scheme to circumvent Esau’s right of primogeniture. Come on, if the God of Abraham Himself makes promises that have proven to be 100% fulfilled so far, could Rebekah and ‘yes mommy’ Yaakov not simply trust Abraham’s God? Talk about another ‘deja vu’, this is just like Sarah resorting to her way of producing an heir for Abraham through Hagar.
We should learn from these examples in Scripture, right? Except that we don’t hear YHWH’s voice speaking directly to us regarding specific promises and events that will come to pass. But we DO HEAR YHWH’s voice regarding His commandments for all humankind on almost every area of life, including diet, health, sanitation. So, let us not be like disobedient Sarah and disobedient Rebekah, and obedient sonYaakov and obedient husband Abraham — heeding the voice of humans, specially when we know what the Divine Voice has already stated for us. Shades of Eden, eh?
The ‘twins’ story is another of those tell-able tales that are easily taught to children, hence inspiring children’s bible illustrations which we used here. Unbracketted commentary is from Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz; translation is Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses with commentary indicated by “EF”; additional commentary “RA” from Robert Alter who also published a translation with the same title as Fox.– Admin1.]
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Genesis/Bereshith 27
THE BLESSING OF ISAAC
1 Now when Yitzhak was old and his eyes had become too dim for seeing,
he called Esav, his elder son, and said to him:
My son!
He said to him:
Here I am.[RA] his eyes grew too bleary to see. Isaac, the man of taste (25:28) and of touche (26:8), is deprived of sight in his infirm old age. In the central episode of this story, he will rely in sequence on taste, touch and smell, ignoring the evidence of sound, to identify his supposed firstborn.
2 He said:
Now here, I have grown old, and do not know the day of my death.I know not the day of my death. ‘I know not how soon I may die’ (Moffatt).
3 So now, pray pick up your weapons-your hanging-quiver and your bow,
go out into the field and hunt me down some hunted-game,
4 and make me a delicacy, such as I love;
bring it to me, and I will eat it,
that I may give you my own blessing before I die.
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my soul may bless thee. Only an emphatic form of “I may bless thee’; see XII,13. The dying utterance was deemed prophetic.
[EF] delicacy: See 25:28. Yitzhak is tied to the senses, a trait that he prizes in Esav. my own blessing: Or “my special blessing.” Heb. nefesh frequently means “self” or “personality.”
[RA] I may solemnly bless you. The Hebrew says literally, “my life-breath [nafshi] may bless you.” Nafshi here is an intensive synonym for “I,” and hence something like “solemnly bless” or “absolutely bless” is suggested.
5 Now Rivka was listening as Yitzhak spoke to Esav his son,
and so when Esav went off into the fields to hunt down hunted-game to bring (to him),
heard. More accurately, ‘was listening.’ To understand Rebekah’s action, it is necessary to bear in mind what had been stated in XXV,23. When she had inquired of the LORD about her unborn children, she had been told, ‘the elder shall serve the younger.’ This prophecy appeared on the point of being falsified by Isaac’s intention to bestow his chief blessing upon Esau. Knowing how attached Isaac was to the elder son, she must have felt that it would be useless to try and dissuade her husband from his intention. She, therefore, in desperation, decided to circumvent him.
[RA] And Rebekah was listening as Isaac spoke to Esau. According to the convention of biblical narrative, there can be only two interlocutors in a dialogue (as in Aeschylean tragedy), though one of them may be a collective presence–e.g., a person addressing a crowd and receiving its collective response. Within the limits of this convention, the writer has woven an artful chain. The story, preponderantly in dialogue, is made up of seven interlocking scenes: Isaac-Esau, Rebekah-Jacob, Jacob-Isaac, Isaac-Esau, Rebekah-Jacob, Rebekah-Isaac, Isaac-Jacob. (The last of these occupies the first four verses of Chapter 28). The first two pairs set out the father and his favorite son, then the mother and hr favorite son, in opposing tracks. Husband and wife are kept apart until the penultimate scene; there is no dialogue at all between the two brothers—sundered by the formal mechanics of the narrative—or between Rebekah and Esau. Although one must always guard against excesses of numerological exegesis, it is surely not accidental that there are just seven scenes, and that the key word “blessing” (berakhah) is repeated seven times.
to bring. The Septuagint reads instead “for his father,” which is phonetically akin to the word in the Masoretic Text (either variant is a single word in the Hebrew). The Septuagint reading has a slight advantage of syntactic completeness, but subsequent exchanges in the story insist repeatedly on the verb “to bring” as an essential element in the paternal instructions.
6 Rivka said to Yaakov her son, saying:
Here, I was listening as your father spoke to Esav your brother, saying:
7 Bring me some hunted-game and make me a delicacy, I will eat it
and give you blessing before YHVH, before my death.
[EF] before YHWH: Note that Rivka adds these words to her husband’s.
[RA] and I shall bless you in the LORD’s presence. Rebekah substitutes this for “that I may solemnly bless you” in the actual speech on which she eavesdropped, thus heightening the sense of the sacred and irrevocable character of the blessing she wants Jacob to steal.
8 So now, my son, listen to my voice, to what I command you:
9 Pray go to the flock and take me two fine goat kids from there,
[EF] take: Fetch
[RA] two choice kids. Kids will again be an instrument of deception, turned on Jacob, when his sons bring him Joseph’s tunic soaked in kid’s blood. And in the immediately following episode (Genesis chapter 38), Judah, the engineer of the deception, will promise to send kids as payment tot he woman he imagines is a roadside whore, and who is actually his daughter-in-law Tamar, using deception to obtain what is rightfully theirs.
I will make them into a delicacy for your father, such as he loves;
10 you bring it to your father, and he will eat,
so that he may give you blessing before his death.
11 Yaakov said to Rivka his mother:
Here, Esav my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man,
[EF] Look, Esau my brother is a hairy man. It is surely noteworthy that Jacob expresses no compunction, only fear of getting caught.
12 perhaps my father will feel me-then I will be like a trickster in his eyes,
and I will bring a curse and not a blessing on myself!
13 His mother said to him:
Let your curse be on me, my son!
Only: listen to my voice and go, take them for me.[EF] Let your curse be on me: Ominously, Rivka disappears from the narrative after v. 46.
14 He went and took and brought them to his mother, and his mother made a delicacy, such as
his father loved.
15 Rivka then took the garments of Esav, her elder son, the choicest ones that were with her in the house,choicest garments. As distinct from the rough and blood-stained garments he wore when hunting.
which were with her in the house. Though Esau was married and presumably had a home of his own, he would keep some of his clothes at his father’s house, which he would don during his visits from hunting, after removing his soiled garments.
[RA] 15-16. the garments of Esau . . . the skins of the kids. Both elements point forward to the use of a garment to deceive first Jacob, then Judah, with the tunic soaked in kid’s blood combining the garment motif and the kid motif.
16 and clothed Yaakov, her younger son;
and with the skins of the goat kids, she clothed his hands and the smooth-parts of his neck.
17 Then she placed the delicacy and the bread that she had made in the hand of Yaakov her son.
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18 He came to his father and said:
Father!
He said:
Here I am. Which one are you, my son?
[EF] Which one are you? Three times—here, in v. 21, and in v. 24—the father asks for assurances about the son’s identity.my son: This phrase reverberates throughout the story, underlining the confusion over the identity of the sons.
[RA] Who are you, my son? The inclination of several modern translations to sort out the logic of these words by rendering them as “Which of my sons are you?” can only be deplored. Isaac’s stark question, as Tyndale and the King James Version rightly sensed, touches the exposed nerve of identity and moral fitness that gives this ambiguous tale its profundity.
19 Yaakov said to his father:
I am Esav, your firstborn.
I have done as you spoke to me:
Pray arise, sit and eat from my hunted-game,
that you may give me your own blessing.
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I am Esau thy first-born. These words misled Isaac, and were spoken with the intention of inducing his father to believe that it was Esau who stood before him. Jacob, having been persuaded to adopt his mother’s plan, is forced to play his part to the end (Ibn Ezra).
[EF] Esav your firstborn: From the first word the lie is blatant; contrast Esav’s tension-filled reply to the same question in v. 32.
[RA] I am Esau your firstborn. He reserves the crucial term “firstborn” for the end of his brief response. As Nahum Sarna notes, the narrator carefully avoids identifying Esau as firstborn, using instead “elder son.” The loaded term is introduced by Jacob to cinch his false claim, and it will again be by Esau (verse 32) when he returns from the hunt.
Rise, pray, sit up. It is only now that we learn the full extent of Isaac’s infirmity: he is not only blind but also bedridden.
20 Yitzhak said to his son:
How did you find it so hastily, my son?
He said: Indeed, YHVH your God made it happen for me.
so quickly. This was not an oversight of Rebekah’s. She was obliged to hurry lest Esau should return and upset the plot.
the LORD thy God sent me good speed. Such words were not of the kind likely to have been spoken by the rough Esau. The name of God was probably rare on his lips. Hence Jacob’s statement arouses his father’s suspicions, who requires to be assured by the very test which Jacob dreaded, in v. 12.
[EF]made it happen: An appropriate expression to use with Yitzhak, see 24.12.
21 Yitzhak said to Yaakov:
Pray come closer, that I may feel you, my son,
whether you are really my son Esav or not.
22 Yaakov moved closer to Yitzhak his father.
He felt him and said: The voice is Yaakov’s voice, the hands are Esav’s hands—
23 but he did not recognize him, for his hands were like the hands of Esav his brother, hairy.
Now he was about to bless him,so he blessed him. If that be the meaning of the Hebrew, we should expect the wording of the blessing to follow immediately. We do not, however, have that until v. 28. It is therefore possible that the Hebrew should here be rendered: ‘he greeted him.’
[EF] hairy: In the end “yitzhak relies more on the sense of touch than on his hearing. Yet the latter is usually regarded as the source of truth in the Bible (see Deut. 4:12, for example.)
[RA] Are you my son Esau? Doubt still lingers in Isaac’s mind because of the voice he hears, and so he is driven to ask this question again. His doubt may seem assuaged when he asks his son to kiss him just before the blessing, but that, as Gerhard von Rad observes, is evidently one last effort to test the son’s identity, through the sense of smell. The extent of Rebekah’s cunning is thus fully revealed: one might have wondered why Jacob needed his brother’s garments to appear before a father incapable of seeing them—now we realize she has anticipated the possibility that Isaac would try to smell Jacob: it is Esau’s smell that he detects in Esau’s clothing.
24 when he said: Are you he, my son Esav? He said: I am.
25 So he said: Bring it close to me, and I will eat from the hunted-game of my son,
in order that I may give you my own blessing.
He put it close to him and he ate,
he brought him wine and he drank.
26 Then Yitzhak his father said to him:
Pray come close and kiss me, my son.
27 He came close and kissed him.
Now he smelled the smell of his garments
and blessed him and said:
See, the smell of my son
is like the smell of a field
that YHVH has blessed.
[EF] a field: Fitting for Esav, the “man of the field” (25:27).
28 So may God give you
from the dew of the heavens,
from the fat of the earth,
(along with) much grain and new-wine!
the dew of heaven. In those countries where the days are hot and the nights are cold, the dew is very abundant and drenches the ground. It is essential to vegetation during the rainless summer, and was therefore regarded as a Divine blessing.
29 May peoples serve you,
may tribes bow down to you;
be master to your brothers,
may your mother’s sons bow down to you!
Those who damn you, damned!
Those who bless you, blessed!
peoples. Refer to foreign nations, like the Canaanites.
brethren. Kindred peoples.
thy mother’s sons. ‘Sons’ is here used in the sense of descendants.
cursed . . . blessed. Jacob was thus to inherit the Divine promise made to Abraham in XII,3.
[EF] Those who bless you, blessed: Perhaps hearkening back in God’s speech to Avraham in 12:3. Note that this blessing, at least in this particular wording, is never spoken to Yitzhak.
30 Now it was, when Yitzhak had finished blessing Yaakov,
yes it was-Yaakov had just gone out, out from the presence of Yitzhak his father—
that Esav his brother came back from his hunting.
[RA] as soon as Isaac finished. This entire sentence makes us aware of the break-neck speed at which events are unfolding. Rebekah and Jacob have managed to carry out her scheme just in the nick of time, and the physical “bind” between this scene and the preceding one is deliberately exposed, just as the bind between the first and second scene was highlighted by Rebekah’s presence as eavesdropper.
31 He too made a delicacy and brought it to his father.
He said to his father:
Let my father arise and eat from the hunted-game of his son,
that you may give me your own blessing.
[RA] Let my father rise and eat of the game of his son . . . bless me. Jacob’s more nervous and urgent words for his father to arise from his bed were cast in the imperative (with the particle of entreaty, na’, “pray”). Esau, confident that he has brought the requisites for the ritual of blessing, addresses his father more ceremonially, beginning with the deferential third person. (The movement from third person to second person at the end of the sentence is perfectly idiomatic in biblical Hebrew when addressing a figure of authority.)
32 Yitzhak his father said to him:
Which one are you?
He said:
I am your son, your firstborn, Esav.
[EF] Esav: The exact identification is put off until the end of the sequence, heightening the drama. Similarly, see 22:2.
[RA] Who are you? This is the very question Isaac put to Jacob, but, significantly, “my son” is deleted: Isaac is unwilling to imagine a second “Esau” stands before him, and so at first he questions the interlocutor as though he were a stranger.
I am your son, your firstborn, Esau. The small but crucial divergences from Jacob’s response (verse 18) could scarcely be more eloquent. Esau begins by identifying himself as Isaac’s son—the very term his father had omitted from his question, and which Jacob did not need to invoke because it was part of the question. Then he announces himself as firstborn–a condition to which he has in fact sold off the legal rights–and, finally, he pronounces his own name. Jacob, on his part, first got out the lie, “Esau,” and then declared himself “firstborn.”
33 Yitzhak trembled with very great trembling
and said:
Who then was he
that hunted down hunted-game and brought it to me-I ate it all before you came
and I gave him my blessing!
Now blessed he must remain!
yea, and he shall be blessed. The benediction, having been uttered was irrevocable. It may also imply that Isaac saw in what had happened the will of God.
[EF] blessed he must reman: Once uttered, the words of blessing cannot be rescinded.
[RA] Who is it, then, who caught game. As a final move in the game of false and mistaken identities, Isaac pretends not to know who it is that has deceived him, finding it easier to let Esau name the culprit himself. Isaac must of course realize at once who it is that has taken the blessing because he already had his doubts when he heard the son speaking with the voice of Jacob.
34 When Esav heard the words of his father,
he cried out with a very great and bitter cry,
and said to his father:
Bless me, me also, father!
[EF] 33,34. very great: Movingly, the father’s terror and the son’s anguish mirror one another via use of the same phrase (Heb. ad me’od,which is rare).
[RA] he cried out . . . “Bless me, too, Father!” Esau whose first speech in the narrative was a half-articulate grunt of impatient hunger, had achieved a certain stylistic poise when he addressed his father after returning from the hunt, imagining he was about to receive a blessing. Now, however, faced with irreversible defeat, his composure breaks; first he cries out (the Hebrew meaning is close to “scream” or “shout”), then he asks in the pathetic voice of a small child, “Bless me, too, Father.” Esau strikes a similar note at the end of verse 36 and in verse 38.
35 He said:
Your brother came with deceit and took away your blessing.
36 He said:
Is that why his name was called Yaakov/Heel-sneak? For he has now sneaked against me twice:
My firstborn-right he took, and now he has taken my blessing!
And he said:
Haven’t you reserved a blessing for me?
supplanted. i.e. Outwitted.
my birthright. In his passionate anger, he blames Jacob for ‘taking away’ that which he sold and ratified with an oath.
[EF] Heel-Sneak: In effect, Esav puts a curse on his brother’s name, which will be removed only in 32:29, twenty years later. he has now sneaked against me: Or “cheated me.”
[RA] Was his name called Jacob/that he should trip me now twice by the heels? At birth, Jacob’s name as “heel-grabber” (playing on ‘aqeb, “heel”)/ Now Esau adds another layer of etymology by making the name into a verb from ‘aqob, “crooked,” with the obvious sense of devious or deceitful dealing.
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37 Yitzhak answered, saying to Esav:
Here, I have made him master to you,
and all his brothers I have given him as servants,
with grain and new-wine I have invested him—
so for you, what then can I do, my son?
[EF] invested: Or “sustained.”
38 Esav said to his father:
Have you only a single blessing, father?
Bless me, me also, father!
And Esav lifted up his voice and wept.
wept. ‘Those tears of Esau, the sensuous, wild impulsive man, almost like the cry of some “trapped creature”, are among the most pathetic in the Bible’ (Davidson). The Rabbis declare that bitter retribution are in later years exacted from Jacob for having caused these tears of Esau.
39 Then Yitzhak his father answered, saying to him:
Behold, from the fat of the earth
must be your dwelling-place,
from the dew of the heavens above.[EF] Behold, from the fat of the earth: Some interpret this negatively as “Behold, away from the fat of the earth . . . “
[RA] from the fat of the earth . . . from the dew of the heavens. The notion put forth by some commentators that these words mean something quite different from what they mean in the blessing to Jacob is forced. Isaac, having recapitulated the terms of the blessing in his immediately preceding words to Esau (verse 37), now reiterates them at the beginning of his blessing to Esau: the bounty of heaven and earth, after all, can be enjoyed by more than one son, though overlordship, as he has just made clear to Esau, cannot be shared. (The reversal of order of heaven and earth is a formal variation, a kind of chiasm, and it would be imprudent to read into it any symbolic significance.)
40 You will live by your sword,
you will serve your brother.
But it will be
that when you brandish it,
you will tear his yoke from your neck.by the word shalt thou live. i.e. by campaigns of plunder. The life of marauders dwelling in mountain fastnesses will be his. He will raid his brother’s borders, and cut off the merchants travelling with caravans (Ryle).
thou shalt serve thy brother. The promise of lordship made to Jacob could not be recalled; but Isaac foretells that it will be of limited duration. We read of revolts on the part of the Edomites in I Kings XI,14 and II Kings VIII,20.
[EF] brandish: I.e., a sword; Hebrew obscure.
[RA] By your sword shall you live. Yet Esau’s blessing, like Ishmael’s, is an ambiguous one. Deprived by paternal pronouncement of political mastery, he must make his way through violent struggle.
And when you rebel. The Hebrew verb is obscure and may reflect a defective text. The present rendering steps up the conventional proposal, “grow restive,” lightly glancing in the direction of an emendation others have suggested, timrod, “you shall rebel,” instead of tarid (meaning uncertain). This whole verse, however obscurely, alludes to the later political fortunes of Edom, the trans-Jordanian nation of which Esau is said to be the progenitor. One of the miracles of the story, and of the story of Joseph and his brothers that follows, is that the elements that dumbrate future political configurations in no way diminish the complexity of these figures as individual characters. To the extent that there is a kind of political allegory in all these tales, it remains a secondary feature, however important it might have been for audiences in the First Commonwealth period.
41 And Esav held-a-grudge against Yaakov because of the blessing with which his father had
blessed him. Esav said in his heart:
Let the days of mourning for my father draw near
and then I will kill Yaakov my brother!
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mourning for my father. It is at least to Esau’s credit that he decided to spare his father’s feelings, and wait for his death before avenging himself on Jacob. (Midrash).
[EF] Let the days . . .: That is, wait until my father dies!
42 Rivka was told of the words of Esav, her elder son. She sent and called for Yaakov, her
younger son,
and said to him:
Here, Esav your brother is consoling himself about you, with (the thought of) killing you.[RA] And Rebekah was told the words of Esau. This is a shrewd ploy of oblique characterization of Esau. He had “spoken” these words only to himself, in what is presented as interior monologue. But one must infer that Esau was unable to restrain himself and keep counsel with his own heart but instead blurted out his murderous intention to people in the household.
43 So now, my son, listen to my voice:
Arise and flee to Lavan my brother in Harran,
[RA] So now, my son, listen to my voice. Introducing her counsel to flight, Rebekah uses exactly the same words she spoke at the beginning of her instructions to Jacob about the stratagem of deception to get the blessing.
44 and stay with him for some days, until your brother’s fury has turned away,a few days. It was the mother’s hope that the difference between the brothers would soon be smoothed over, and the pain of separation be quickly succeeded by the joy of reunion. But she was fated never to see him again.
[EF] days: May be an idiomatic usage meaning “years.”
45 until his anger turns away from you and he forgets what you did to him.
Then I will send and have you taken from there—
for should I be bereaved of you both in a single day?
bereaved of you both. Isaac and Jacob; the death of the former being the signal for the murder of the latter.
[EF] Then I will send: This never occurs in the later course of the story.
[RA] Why should I be bereft of you both in one day? The verb shakhal is used for a parent’s bereavement of a child and so “you both” must refer to Jacob and Esau: although a physical struggle between the two would scarcely be a battle between equals, in her maternal fear she imagines the worst-case scenario, the twins killing each other, and in the subsequent narrative, the sedentary Jacob does demonstrate a capacity of unusual physical strength.
46 So Rivka said to Yitzhak:
I loathe my life because of those Hittite women;
if Yaakov should take a wife from the Hittite women-like these, from the women of the land,
why should I have life?daughters of Heth. See XXVI,34. To save Isaac from the knowledge of the true reason why Jacob was leaving his home, Rebekah pretends that he is going to Haran in search of a wife.
[RA] I loathe my life because of the Hittite women! Rebekah shows the same alacrity in this verbal manipulation that she evinced in preparing the kidskin disguise and the mock-venison dish, and, earlier, in her epic watering of the camels. Instead of simply registering that Jacob ought not to take a wife from the daughters of the Canaanite (compare 24:3 and 28:1), she brandishes a sense of utter revulsion, claiming that her life is scarcely worth living because of the native daughters-in-law Esau has inflicted on her. This tactic not only provides a persuasive pretext for Jacob’s departure but also allows her—obliquely, for she does not pronounce his name—to discredit Esau.
what good to me is life? The phrase she uses, lamah li ayim, contains an echo of her question during her troubled pregnancy, lamah zeh ‘anokhi, “why then me?”