TOLEDOTH
- 1
Bereshit 25:19 to 26: 22
By
David Brooks
We are in the
first year of the full triennial cycle, which includes the latter half of Genesis
Chapter 25 and the first half of Chapter 26.
My D’var focuses just on Chapter 25: verses 19 to 34. In these 16 verses, the text shifts from the
digression on Hagar and Ishmael – the “other” nation from the Abrahamic line –
and “reverts to its central theme, the fortunes of those who are heirs to God’s
covenant.”[i] There is plenty to keep us interested in
these few verses, which include the famous story of Esau selling his birthright
for a mess of potage, as the saying goes.
It turns out that this was not such a terrible thing, but I am getting
ahead of the story, so let’s start at the beginning.
Right off, there
is a small mystery. Using Plaut’s
translation, the text says: “This is the story of Isaac, son of Abraham. Abraham begot Isaac.” (Ber., 25:19.) It seems we are being told the same thing
twice. However, by definition, there is
nothing superfluous in the Torah, so the repetition must be intended to teach
us something. The common interpretation
is from Rashi, who says that the repetition teaches the sceptical that Abraham
and not Abimelech (the king with whom Abraham left Sarah for a short time) was
Isaac’s father. Other interpretations
are that Isaac was the son who really counted, or that Abraham himself took care
of Isaac’s education.[ii]
Let’s jump to the
complaint of Rivka, who was suffering from a difficult pregnancy. First there were 20 years when she wasn’t
able to conceive. Then, she did become
pregnant but only after a special entreaty to God from Isaac (some say Isaac
and Rivka, as if to say they want to have a child together).[iii] And now this almost unbearable pain, as
indicated by her statement: “If it is like this, why do I live”, or perhaps,
more liberally interpreted, “If this birth is so important, why do I suffer
so.”[iv] She poses her question directly to God, or at
least that is how I interpret the words:
lidrosh et HASHEM. As
indicated, she uses the four letter Tetragrammaton (here represented by HASHEM),
which is the personal name of God.[v] However, the rabbis who composed Midrash
Rabbah in the early part of the Common Era
did not much like the idea of God talking to a woman. They had to admit that God had talked to
Sarah (whom they call “that righteous woman”), but that, they say, was a
special case. They appear to think it
unseemly or perhaps immodest that God should talk to a woman, or vice
versa. Thus, the rabbinic consensus is
that Rivka’s method of enquiry was to go to one of the academies of the
time. Even this is going too far for
some, and they conclude that she was simply asking other women whether
pregnancy was always so difficult. So
much for the God who has no sex and is above gender distinctions.
In any event,
Rivka gets an answer. She learns that
she is carrying twins, and that each twin is to be the seed for a nation. We almost have the Abraham story over again,
except there it was two women, each with one son. Here it is one woman with two sons. However, as before, they are not friendly
siblings. They are already struggling in
the womb, and from that point on the rabbis find every way to blacken poor
Esau’s name. For example, they say that,
whenever Rivka passed by a synagogue (forget that synagogues did not exist at
the time of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs), Jacob tried to emerge, but whenever
she passed by a heathen shrine, Esau tried to emerge. When the words twins is used in
Genesis 25:24, it is spelled in a highly condensed fashion (pronounced “tomim”)
where we would expect either t’wmym or t’wmm (both pronounced
“te’omim”). Later in Genesis (38:27) when Tamar gives birth to twins, the word
is written in one of its expected forms (t’wmym).[vi] The rabbis deduce from this difference that,
in the case of Rivka, only Jacob was righteous, whereas in the case of Tamar,
both Perez and Zerah were righteous.
Still another interpretation is that Esau is the descendent of Laban’s
wicked line, and Jacob of Abraham’s righteous one. (This deduction is based on one of those
plays on words that the rabbis loved.[vii]) We seem to learn that Esau was a good hunter
who loved to go into the field, but, with some more word play, the rabbis
deduce that he was clever at deceiving people, and that he was going into the
field to rape and rob. Jacob instead was
in his tents (the word in plural), from which the rabbis infer that, in
contrast to Esau, he was studying in not one but two religious academies at the
same time. All of this, by the way, is
from Genesis
Rabbah, Chapter 63.
Poor Esau. He never seemed to get a break, which brings
us to the mess of potage, which shows perhaps that Esau was likely one of those
people with the ability to make a bad situation worse. Clearly he had a very different personality
from Jacob, and that would have been tough enough, but how can a pair of twins
avoid sibling rivalry when the father favours one child and the mother the
other. (All of our patriarchs seem to
have come from marginally dysfunctional families.) In any event, I assume that you all know the
story. Jacob is cooking what many say
are lentils as a mourning meal for Abraham, who has just passed away. Esau comes home tired, and asks for some of
them. Jacob says, sure thing big
brother, but let’s work out a trade.
I’ll give you my lentils; you give me your birthright. And both transactions will be consummated
right now. (That’s the significance of
the word kayom (lit. “as today”) in Genesis 25:31. Some rabbis say that the lentils were only
the symbol that consummated the deal, not the real price that Jacob paid, but
others say that the mess of potage was indeed the price.[viii]
First of all, what
was the birthright? It was both symbolic
and economic. Symbolically, it indicated
which male was to lead the family in the future, and it required of him that he
take responsibility for ritual sacrifices, some of which carried the death
penalty if performed improperly.[ix] (Remember, this was before the priestly
period and the centralization of the sacrificial service under the Levites in
Now that we know
what the birthright is, there are two issues.
Was the sale legal? Was the sale
moral? The answer to the first question
is clear: Yes, it was. There are many
records from the time that show that the sale of the birthright was possible,
and that it often took place when the eldest son was in difficult financial
circumstances. As well, the father could
displace the eldest son from the birthright, as Jacob himself did twice: first,
in the case of Reuben, whom he considered too headstrong to lead the family,
especially after he insulted Jacob by prematurely bedding his concubine, Bilhah;
later, shortly before his death, when he chose to give the birthright to
Ephraim, Joseph’s younger son – and Ephraim was indeed one of the surviving
tribes. Perhaps the best evidence that
transfer of the birthright was possible is the legislation later in the Torah (Dev.
It is a commonplace that
legal prohibitions constitute sociological evidence of the most revealing
kind. A practice suddenly proscribed by
law may be safely assumed to have been previously both socially acceptable and
legally valid.
The much more
interesting question then is whether Jacob’s purchase of the birthright under
these conditions was moral. Though the classical rabbis do not say so explicitly,
they clearly believe that it was not.
They make a few excuses for Jacob, as when they justify their view that
Esau was also a trickster, and when they point out that Jacob was more
qualified than Esau to receive the blessing: the one focussing on the eternal,
the other on the here-and-now; the one exceptional, the other ordinary. However, they also feel that it just sets the
stage for the trick that Jacob and Rivkah will later play on the blind Isaac at
the time of the blessing. They make a direct
parallel between these acts and Laban’s substitution of Leah for Rachel, as if
to say: “Turn About Makes Fair
Play.” The rabbis also note that the
very next thing that is recorded in Torah after Esau gives up the birthright is
that there is famine in the land. Most
importantly, they make an even stronger link between Jacob’s less than
honourable early life and the series of “trials and tragedies” (Plaut’s words)
that dog him throughout his life: his
need to flee from Esau; the early death of his preferred wife; the
disappearance and apparent death of his favourite son; the constant turmoil
within his family; and then his death in a foreign land. No other patriarch says of his life that his
days have been “few and bitter” (Ber. 47:9). In the words of Nahum Sarna:[xii]
All the foregoing makes quite clear
Scripture’s condemnation of Jacob’s moral lapse in his treatment of his brother
and father. In fact, an explicit
denunciation could hardly have been more effective or more scathing than this
unhappy biography
The point is that
God has already twice promised that Isaac would have offspring, and that one of
them would carry on God’s covenant.[xiii] Now God indicates which of the two children
is to carry on the seed of the still-forming Jewish people: “And the elder
shall serve the younger.” (Ber. 25:23) This statement makes clear that
it is Jacob who has been chosen, and this election is quite independent of the
questionable means that Jacob uses to get the birthright. Indeed, by emphasizing his divine right, it
is simultaneously condemning his eagerness to take it, something that was
presaged when, according to the story (Ber., 25:26), Jacob emerged from the
birth canal grasping Esau’s heal. There
was no need for Jacob to force the issue along, and, perhaps his impatience was
what worried R. Huna, when he commented: “If he [Jacob] is deserving, he [Esau]
shall serve him; if not, he [Esau] shall enslave him.”[xiv] There was a long road to be travelled between
the younger Jacob and the older
.
. . . there is every reason to believe that Jacob’s dealings with Esau and his
father represent a stage of morality in which the successful application of
shrewd opportunism was highly respected.
It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that Scripture should have
cast the story in a mold of implicit reprobation, introducing the oracle
element to make the transference of the birthright independent of subsequent
events, and depicting the unbroken chain of Jacob’s misfortunes as the direct
result of actions not regarded as reprehensible according to the standards of
his time.
Let me close with
just one comment on today’s Haftarah.
The selection is from Malachi, which means “My Messenger” and is
therefore probably not the prophet’s real name, and he is complaining about the
decline of social and religious morality in the time of Persian rule before the
erection of the
[i]. Nahum
M.Sarna, Understanding Genesis (New York: Schocken
Books,1970), p. 181.
[ii]. Hertz
Chumash. Note to 25:19.
[iii]. Genesis
Rabbah. 5. The interpretation is
based on the pronoun “lenokhach” which can mean
opposite her, as if they prayed facing one another. The point is that Jacob has already been
promised offspring, but not Rivka.
[iv]. “Whether
these words are precisely what Rebekah meant it is
hard to say, for the Hebrew original is not wholly clear.” Sarna, op. cit., p. 182
[v]. ____ __, United Synagogue Calendar for
5761; November.
[vi]._ Hertz
Chumash. Note to 25:24.
[vii]. H.
Freedman and Maurice Simon, Midrash Rabbah: Genesis 1 (London: The Soncino Press, 1939), fn 1 to 63:4. Play on Aramai,
meaning Aramean, which, by a slight shift, can be converted to ram’ai, meaning rouge or cheat.
[viii]. Hertz
Chumash. Note to 25:33.
[ix]. Hertz
Chumash. Note to 25:30.
[x]. Plaut Chumash, p.
175; see also Sarna, p. 184.
[xi]. Sarna,
op. cit., p.185.
[xii]. Sarna,
op. cit., p. 184.
[xiii]. The
two promises are made directly to Abraham, but one has to suppose that Isaac
was familiar with them: Ber.
[xiv]. Genesis
Rabbah, 63:7. No one
is recorded as reacting to R. Huna’s comment, but
neither did anyone challenge him.
[xv]. Sarna,
op. cit., p. 188.
[xvi]. Page 55
[xvii]. In
what may be a mild if amusing attempt to justify the fact that Esau emerged
first, one rabbi notes that this proves that the first impregnation created
Jacob and the second Esau, just as if one puts pebbles in a bottle, the last in
comes out first. I suspect that the
rabbis knew better, but they were always willing to put scientific knowledge to
one side if they wished to make a point.