Genesis/Bereshith 33: "I have plenty, my brother, let what is yours remain yours. "

[Esau . . . the last words we heard from his mouth was revenge:  

If you were Yaakov/Yisrael and those words were all you can associate with your twin whose rights of primogeniture you divested him of . . . and all these years you have not asked forgiveness nor made up for his loss, you should be dreading this first encounter with a brother you unjustly wronged!  And it is not as though the meeting is simply a private confrontation twin to twin, brother to brother, man to man, but 400 men on Esau’s side;  and wives, concubines, children and servants on Yaakov’s side; quite a spectacle to behold!

But surprise, surprise, thanks to Esau who himself has undergone a character change (without a name change), there is forgiveness, reconciliation and peace instead of ‘even-ing’ up an old grudge. This twin emerges as the better man, truly deserving of a firstborn’s rights . . . and yet none of that matters anymore; his life has been blessed:  

33:11 “God has shown me favor . . . I have everything.”  

What is it about Esau that’s not to like? Too bad he’s not the right ‘twin’ in the line of the ‘chosen’.

Whatever happens in future history (is that a contradiction?) between Israel and the Edomites, well that is between the descendants of the twins.  But for sure if the story of Yaakov’s cheating Esau of his birthright had been handed down from generation after generation, ‘tribal’ mentality somehow takes over and whatever fraternal love might have existed between Esau and Yaakov in this meeting did not spill over to the generations down the line, as it understandably happens in real life.

Unbracketed commentary is from Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz; additional commentary from RA/Robert Alter and EF/Everett Fox, the latter’s translation The Five Books of Moses is our choice  for this website,  —Admin1]

Genesis/Bereshith 33

THE MEETING OF JACOB AND ESAU

[EF] Resolution (33:1-17):  Once the Yabbok crisis is past, there is hope for reconciliation of the brothers.  Even so, Yaakov exercises caution, behaving like a man who is presenting tribute to a king.  The narrative is brought full circle in vv. 10 and 11, where “face” is once again highlighted and where Yaakov’s gift is termed a “token-of-blessing.”  At last the tension of Yaakov’s early life seems resolved.

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came. Or, ‘was coming.’

[RA] he divided the children between Leah and RAchel. Again, the principle of binary division running through the whole story comes into play.  Here, there is a binary split between two wives on one side and the two concubines on the other.  The former of these categories is itself split between Rachel and Leah.

Although the division at this point, unlike the previous day’s division into two camps, appears to be for purposes of display, not defense, it looks as though Jacob retains a residual fear of assault, and so he puts the two concubines and their children first, then Leah and her children, and Rachel and Joseph at the very rear.

passed over before them. To conciliate his brother if possible, or to bear the brunt of the attack, and thus help his wives and children to escape.

seven times. In ancient inscriptions, the phrase, ‘at the feet of my lord, seven times and seven times I fall,’ frequently occurs.

[RA] bowed to the ground seven times until he drew near.  This practice of bowing seven times as one approaches a monarch from a distance was common court ritual, as parallels in the Amarna letters and the Ugaritic documents, (both from the middle of the second millennium B.C.E.) indicate.

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kissed him. Esau proved both good-natured and forgiving.  He fell on Jacob’s neck, kissed Jacob, and they wept with the strong emotion of Orientals.  Yet, the word for ‘and kissed him’ is marked in the Heb. text with dots on every letter.  The Rabbis doubted whether the kiss of Esau was genuine or not.  Esau’s conduct is certainly strange.  If his intentions were friendly from the first, why was he accompanied by so considerable a force as four hundred armed men?  And if he had started out with a resolve to injure his brother, how account for the warm greeting immediately on coming face to face with him?  This was in answer to Jacob’s prayer, the Rabbis say.  God had turned Esau’s hate to love.  Be that as it may, we have here another instance of the splendid impartiality of Scripture.  The ancestor of Israel’s hereditary enemy, the Edomites, is presented as a chivalrous and dignified, full of magnanimity and generosity.

[RA] Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell upon his neck.  This is, of course, the big surprise in the story of the twins: instead of lethal grappling, Esau embraces Jacob in fraternal affection.  The Masoretic Text has both brothers weeping, the verb showing a plural inflection, but some scholars have conjectured that the plural waw at the end of the verb is a scribal error, duplicated from the first letter of the next word in the text, and that Esau alone weeps, Jacob remaining impassive.

camp.  i.e. the droves sent ahead as a gift to Esau.  See XXXII,17.

[EF] What to you is: I.e., What does it mean to you?

[RA] What do you mean by all this camp.  The Hebrew is literally, “Who to you is all this camp,” but both “who to you” (mi lekha) and “what to you” (mah lekha) have the idiomatic sense of, what do you mean, or want.  “Camp” in this context means something like “retinue” or “procession of people,” but the continuity with the twin camps of the preceding episode is obviously important for the writer.

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I have enough.  lit. ‘I have much.’  Esau’s reluctance to accept the gift was probably only another illustration of Oriental courtesy; see Chap. XXIII.

[EF] my brother: The phrase suggests that they are now reconciled.

[RA] I have much, my brother. Esau in fact has become a kind of prince, despite his loss of birthright and blessing, and he can speak to Jacob in princely generosity.  It is striking that he addresses Jacob as “my brother”—the familial term with the first-person possessive suffix is generally a form of affectionate address in biblical Hebrew—while Jacob continues to call him “my lord,” never swerving from the deferential terms of court etiquette.

seen thy face.  The phrase ‘to see the face’ expresses the idea of being favourably received.  Jacob accordingly meant, ‘I have been graciously pardoned by you, as I would have received forgiveness from God, had I appeared before Him in the humble spirit and with tokens of contrition wherewith I approach you.  Regard, then, my gift as a minchah, an offering.

[RA] for have I not seen your face as one might see God’s face, and you received me in kindness?  This most extravagant turn in the rhetoric of deferential address pointedly carries us back to Jacob’s reflection on his nocturnal wrestling with the nameless stranger:  “for I have seen God face to face and I came out alive.”  “And you received me in kindness” (just one word in the Hebrew) is significantly substituted for “I came out alive,” the very thing Jacob feared he might not do when he met his brother.

my gift.  lit. ‘my blessing’, the gift being the outward manifestation of the goodwill in the giver’s heart.

I have enough. lit. ‘all’, Jacob has ‘all’ now that the danger of being slain by a brother, or of slaying a brother, is over; (see XXXII,8).  Whereas Esau has ‘much’; therefore, he is quite willing to have ‘more’.

[RA] take my blessing. The word for “blessing,” berakhah, obviously has the meaning in context of “my gift,” or, as Rashi interestingly proposes, invoking as an Old French equivalent, mon salud, my gift of greeting.  But the term chosen brilliantly echoes a phrase Jacob could not have actually heard, which Esau pronounced to their father two decades earlier:  “he’s taken my blessing” (27:36).  In offering the tribute, Jacob is making restitution for his primal theft, unwittingly using language that confirms the act of restitution.

I have everything. Jacob of course means “I have everything I need.”  But there is a nice discrepancy between his words and the parallel ones of his brother that is obscured by all English translators (with the exception of Everett Fox), who use some term like “enough” in both instances.  Esau says he has plenty; Jacob says he has everything—on the surface, simply declaring that he doesn’t need the flocks he is offering as a gift, but implicitly “outbidding” his brother, obliquely referring to the comprehensiveness of the blessing he received from their father.

I will go before thee. Esau offers him his armed men.

Jacob, knowing the unstable character of Esau, is anxious that they should part company as quickly as possible.

tender. i.e. unequal to the fatigues of travel.

[RA] are my burden.  The Hebrew says literally, “are upon me.”

the cattle. lit. ‘the work’; the use of the word in Gen. II,2, where it refers to, among other things, the creatures that God had made.  The Heb. word for ‘work’ might here also mean ‘property’, as in Exod. XXII,7.10.

unto Seir.  There is no record that Jacob went to Seir to see his brother.  But, add the Rabbis, Jacob will yet visit Esau in the day of the Messiah, when the reconciliation between Israel and Edom will be complete.

[RA] at the heels.  Literally, “at the foot.”

till I come to my lord in Seir.  This is a “diplomatic” offer, for in fact Jacob will head back northward to Succoth, in the opposite direction from Seir.

Jacob prudently declines the offer.

[EF]  leave with you: Or “station with you,” “put at your disposal.” mine: Lit. “with me.” For what reason?: Yaakov still seems cautious.

[RA] Why should I find such favor in the eyes of my lord?  In this protestation of unworthiness, Jacob preserves the perfect decorum of deferential address to the very end of his dialogue with his brother.  Clearly, he is declining the offer of Esau’s retainers because he still doesn’t trust Esau and intends to put a large distance between himself and Esau or any of Esau’s men.  One should note that the very last word (one word in the Hebrew) spoken by Jacob to Esau that is reported in the story is “my lord.”

Succoth.  The exact site is unknown.  It was part of the territory of the tribe of Gad, West of the Jordan (Josh. XIII,27).  Jacob must have stayed some years in Succoth.

[RA] Succoth. The Hebrew sukkot means “sheds.”

18-20.  AT SHECHEM

[EF] Home: Peace and Violence (33:18-34:31):  “Yaakov came home in peace to the city of Shekhem” (33:18 continues the theme of resolution.  Not only has Esav accepted his gift, but Yaakov has arrived home safely, in fulfillment of his prayer in 28:21.  Like Avraham he purchases land; again like him he builds an altar.

in peace. i.e. peaceably, with peaceable intentions.  Since the word also has the meaning ‘complete, whole’ we have various Midrashic interpretations; such as, recovered from his lameness; and perfect in his knowledge of Torah, which he had not forgotten during his way with Laban.

Shechem.  See XII,6.

before the city. i.e. to the east of the city. About a mile from the city there is still shown Jacob’s well.

[RA] came in peace.  The adjective shalem elsewhere means “whole,” and this has led many interpreters to understand it here as “safe and sound.”  A tradition going back to the Septuagint, and sustained by Claus Westermann among modern commentators, construes this word as the name of a town, Salem, understood to be a synonym for Shechem.  (The claim has been made that a tell aabout two and a half miles from the site of Shechem is the biblical Salem.)  But the Salem where Abraham meets Melchisedek is at an entirely different location, and if that were also a designation for Shechem, one would expect here at the very least the explanatory gloss, “Salem, that is, the town of Shechem” (Shalem, hi’ ‘ir Shekhem).  Because these three verses are an introduction to the story of the rape of Dinah, where in fact Hamor and Shechem say of the sons of Jacob, “these men come in peace (sheleimim) to us,” it is more likely that “came in peace” is the sense here.  Abraham ibn Ezra argues for this meaning, similarly noting the link between the two passages.

when he came from Paddan-Aram. Now that Jacob has at last crossed the Jordan (Succoth is in trans-Jordan) and has taken up residence outside a Canaanite town, the long trajectory of his journey home is completed.

he brought.  The Patriarchs display their independent spirit by establishing an inalienable right to their land by means of purchase.  See Chap. XXIII.

children of Hamor. People of the clan of Hamor.

Shechem’s father.  The founder, or chieftain, of the city of Shechem.

[EF] he acquired: Like his grandfather Avraham, Yaakov must purchase the land. lambs’-worth: Hebrew obscure.

[RA] a hundred kesitahs.  These are either measures of weight for gold and silver, or units for the barter of livestock, or a term derived from the latter which has been transferred to the former.  The purchase of real estate, as with Abraham at Hebron, signals making a claim to permanent residence.

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