Genesis 32: 4 – 36: 43
The Ten Percent Solution
On the eve of his return to the land of Canaan, Jacob learned that his brother Esau, who had previously vowed to kill him, was now on his way to meet him—accompanied by 400 men! Naturally, Jacob was frightened. The prayer that addresses to God is all the more remarkable:
“O God of my [grand]father Abraham and my father Isaac, O Lord, You who said to me, ‘Return to your land and your family and I will treat you kindly,’ I am not worthy of all the kindnesses that You have steadily shown Your servant. I crossed the Jordan with only my walking stick, and now I have become two camps [of my offspring].” (Gen 32:10-11)
Anyone who remembers Jacob’s prayer when he left home twenty years earlier cannot fail to be struck by the change. The younger Jacob’s prayer was all conditions: “If You do this for me and if You give me that and if… and if… and if… then I’ll give You back one tenth of everything that You will have given me” (Gen 28:20-22). Not a very inspiring show of faith. But now, twenty years later, all Jacob can think to say is, “I am not worthy.” In fact, what he says in Hebrew is katonti, literally “I am too small.” This is a man who is now overwhelmed by God’s presence.
That same night, Jacob has his famous fight with an angel. This vision—that’s what it is—lasts until daybreak, when the angel at last is forced to bless Jacob, changing his name to Israel, “because you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed.” Many commentators have discussed the symbolism of this fight and the change of names, but somewhat lost in the struggle is an ancient tradition that suggests a concrete reason for this otherwise unexplained encounter.
Twenty years earlier, Jacob had made his vow to “give You back one tenth of everything You will have given me.” In the interim, he had been out of the country and unable to fulfill his vow. But now that Jacob was at last able to return to his homeland, an angel was sent to give him a simple message from God: “Pay up!”
That’s why, having killed off the men of Shechem for their heinous crime—the rape of Dinah—Jacob and his family headed off immediately to fulfill what he had promised. The “tenth” that Jacob had vowed, was like the tithe that later Israelites regularly had to pay at the Temple. (Tithe and tenth are really equivalent terms.) But where, and what, and to whom was Jacob supposed to pay his tithe? There was no Temple yet, so Jacob did the next best thing and returned to the place where he had made his vow, Bethel.
As for what he was to tithe, his most precious possession was his family, so the first thing that he thought to tithe was the group of sons that had been born to him since making his vow. There were already eleven sons, with a twelfth on the way, in utero. One of these had to be tithed to God—but who was the tenth? He could have counted his sons starting with Reuben, the oldest, but for various reasons Jacob decided to count backwards, starting from the not-yet-born youngest. Counting this way, the tenth turned out to be Levi, and that, this midrash explains, is why the Levites (Levi’s descendants) have been designated to receive their tithe ever since.