Genesis 25:19 – 28:9
A Common Theme
The three encounters between Jacob and Esau in this week’s reading seem to contain a common message. Their first meeting takes place even before they come out of their mother’s womb (Genesis 25:22). There, they pressed so hard against one other that Rebekah went off to ask God what was happening inside her. The response she received hinted at the future of her two sons: they will actually become the founders of two different nations—but not happily allied. “Two nations are in your womb, and two separate peoples will come forth from within you; they will keep struggling with one another, until (eventually) the greater will become subservient to the lesser.”
When they were born, it was Esau who came out of the womb first, “red, like a hairy cloak.” This description fit his role as the future founder of the nation of Edomites: edom sounds like the word for “red” in Hebrew, and “hairy,” se‘ar, sounds like the name of Edom’s famous mountain, Mt. Se‘ir. As Esau was emerging from the womb, Jacob apparently tried to overtake him by holding on to his heel, a gesture that evoked Jacob’s name in Hebrew, ya‘akov (apparently from ‘ekev, heel).
Once the boys were grown, their second significant encounter took place. Esau, who was a skilled hunter, came home after a long hunt, exhausted and famished. Jacob, who was a bit of a homebody, was cooking up a red lentil stew at the time, and Esau asked for a serving. Jacob demurred; “If you want it,” he said, “pay for it with your birthright.” The birthright was normally awarded to the firstborn of the family, and according to the law in Deut 21:17, it consisted of a double portion of everything in the father’s estate—certainly a hefty sum. But Esau is, as he says, starving, so he agrees to the deal (Gen. 25: 29-34).
Their third significant encounter takes place when their father Isaac seeks to confer his paternal blessing on his favored son Esau. Isaac instructs Esau to put on his gear and hunt up some tasty game for a stew (Genesis chap. 27)—then he will be able to bless him on a full stomach. Esau goes off a-hunting, but meanwhile Rebekah has heard of her son Isaac’s intention and sets out to frustrate it. She tells Jacob to go to the flocks and fetch two kids for a stew that she will prepare. Then Jacob can go to his father and pretend to be Esau, thereby getting the paternal blessing intended for his brother.
For this to work, of course, Jacob has to take advantage of the fact that his elderly father is quite blind. Even so, when Jacob enters, Isaac suspects some sort of a trick. “Who are you, my son?” “I am Esau, your firstborn,” Jacob answers—an out-and-out lie! Isaac remains skeptical. “The voice is Jacob’s voice,” he says, “but the hairy arms belong to Esau.” (Rebekah had taken the precaution of covering Jacob’s smooth forearms with goat hair, in order to be more like the skin of her “hairy” son Esau.) Isaac was thus torn between trusting his sense of hearing and his sense of touch. But when Isaac smelled the outdoor smell on the clothes that Jacob was wearing—Rebekah had borrowed them from her older son’s wardrobe and put them on her younger son—Isaac was convinced that this must indeed be Esau. So Isaac blessed him, asking God to award him with all the fine things of this world and, significantly, to make him the master of his brethren, including—even if unintentionally—Esau.
These incidents have troubled interpreters from ancient times. Many have suggested that Esau really didn’t want his birthright, that he had actually “scorned” it or “spurned” it—and that Jacob therefore did no wrong in relieving him of it. But that’s stretching things a bit. The verb translated as “scorned” often means something a little milder, more like “make light of,” and in any case, there’s no indication that this is how Esau felt about the birthright before the fact. A more objective translation would probably say that Esau “thought little of” his birthright—and this might just as likely be meant to describe how Esau reacted after the fact, once he had sold his birthright.
But apologizing for the boys’ behavior misses the whole point. The common pattern of these three encounters, wherein Jacob the Little Guy keeps trying, and ultimately succeeds, in getting what was supposed to be his brother’s (the birthright, the blessing) is actually a representation of the prediction that God had given Rebekah when her twins were still pressing together in her womb: “Two nations are in your womb, and two separate peoples will come forth from within you; they will keep struggling, one with the other, but (in the end,) the greater will be subservient to the lesser.”
This wasn’t talking about two individuals—it wasn’t at all about the later life of the two brothers themselves (as most interpreters seem to think). It was about the two nations that they would establish, Edom and Israel. As the Torah says explicitly, the country of Edom had already become a kingdom when the future Israel was still merely a ragtag collection of vaguely related tribes (Gen 36:31). This was simply a way of saying that Edom was initially the strong, dominant country while Israel was still the Little Guy trying to catch up. But eventually Israel did catch up. During the reign of King David, according to the account in 2 Samuel, Edom was defeated and thereafter became a vassal of David’s (2 Sam 13-14). That is what these three incidents actually point to, the moment when “the greater will be subservient to the lesser.”