Ten major themes (3): deception, neighbours

Deception

At the moment I am re-reading Irving M. Zeitlin's Ancient Judaism (Polity Press, 1984). In chapter 2, "The Patriarchs and their God", the author discusses various ways in which historical information which has been brought to light by archaeology can have a bearing on the way we understand Biblical passages, and he mentions three interesting points which all have the potential to throw new light on parts of the Genesis narrative.

The approach he is using in this section is based on the following general idea: according to Genesis, Abraham originated from Mesopotamia and would certainly have participated in at least some of the cultural assumptions that were current at the time in that area. Fortunately, we now know a lot more about that culture thanks to the discovery of many ancient documents that were previously unknown, so we can reconstruct the general milieu in ways and with a degree of detail that were formerly unthinkable. This helps us to comprehend that there are things that the patriarchs are reported to have said and done which had one meaning to them in their time or in terms of their own culture, which might well seem not to make any sense or to mean something quite different from the perspective of people with a different set of customs. That is pretty obvious as a general doctrine, but one exciting thing about this is that now we can actually possibly pin down specific instances where this may be happening and reconstruct, at least hypothetically, explanations for some things. But here's another thing: it may perhaps not be just us, today, who tend to lose our bearings when we interpret certain things narrated of the patriarchs in Genesis; the compilers of the book we know may themselves already have become a bit disoriented. This stands to reason if we think about it: we are talking about cultural assumptions and customs which the patriarchs, assuming that they were ever historical figures or representative of people who did exist, brought with them from Ur Kasdim or Haran to Canaan more than three thousand years ago. The stories were presumably passed down over many generations, perhaps gradually becoming embellished and otherwise modified, yet those old customs and assumptions which the protagonists of the stories once had need not have been passed down without change, so that there would have come a time when the transmitters of the stories, no matter how faithful they were, either no longer understood certain things in the stories they told, or understood them in a new, changed fashion, as did the people who put the material into writing and those who eventually gave the book its final form.


Let's look at the examples Zeitlin cites because that will make all this clearer. The culture in Haran around the time when Abraham's immediate ancestors would have been there was Hurrian, a people who lived in Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia during the Bronze Age, in other words, in part of what is now Turkey and Syria, many of whose sites were excavated in the twentieth century, bringing to light a lot of material. Although Abraham's family were not Hurrians themselves, they were living among such a society and would certainly have received influences from it. What can present knowledge of Hurrian culture help to explain about the behaviour of the patriarchs who came to Canaan?

After Abram and his wife Sarai migrated to Canaan, we read that there was famine in the land and so they went down to Egypt (ch. 12). A misunderstanding arises there because Abram presents Sarai as his sister, rather than as his wife. And the same sort of comedy of errors occurs a second time, only this time in Gerar (ch. 20). Incredibly, Isaac makes the exact same mistake in Gerar when he is there with his wife Rebecca, whom he also claims is his sister (ch. 26). Frankly, it does make you want to ask what was wrong with these people. It is usually suggested that these are three variants of a single story, which would at least clear a few of the characters of suffering from chronic amnesia. Even if so, what was the deal? Why say your wife is your sister? Abraham is made to offer two justifications. One is that he was afraid that if people knew he was married to such a desirable woman, he would be murdered and his wife stolen. In the event, by announcing that she was his wife, he nearly triggered another calamity, because the Egyptians and the Philistines interpreted this to mean that Sarah was available, which led to quite a mishmash. Abraham's other defence is that it wasn't really a lie because Sarai was his sister - almost; her father, he explains, was also Terah, though she had a different mother (strangely nothing is said of this in the parts of the book where Abraham's genealogy is spelt out, which makes it all look suspiciously ad hoc). Is this exactly the way the story originally went? Or were the later compilers somewhat embarrassed by this strange story so that they tried to "fix" it as best they could?

Well, says Zeitlin, as a matter of fact we now know that "in Hurrian society the laws enabled a man to confer upon his wife the status of sister as well, regardless of her actual blood ties. The wife thereby acquired greater social honour than she would have otherwise, and greater protection as well. As a former inhabitant of Haran - an old Hurrian centre - Abraham was probably familiar with these practices. Hence when he and Isaac, on their visits to foreign lands, Egypt and Gerar, spoke of their wives as sisters, they were actually striving to honour and protect them." But notice the point that Zeitlin makes now: "This, however, is not the understanding we derive from the biblical accounts. There it is deception for selfish motives. This suggests that by the time these episodes were written down several hundred years after they had occurred, even the biblical redactors failed to grasp their original significance." For a fuller discussion of this subject see EAS pp. 91-94.

And that is not all, for Zeitlin now goes on to observe something else just as important: "[The redactors] failed to understand the events ostensibly pointing to moral shortcomings in the patriarchs, but nonetheless included them in the written tradition. From this we also learn something about the redactorial process: the editors... were not free to select or reject material, or otherwise tamper with it" (my emphasis). So, even where the story seems not to favour the integrity of the protagonists, perhaps as suggested here because of the loss of key background information, the text was respected and transmitted as faithfully as possible.

Esau and Jacob were twins but Esau was born first. Jacob, however, manages to do his brother out of the birthright and the father's blessing: the former through what might be viewed as a business deal, I suppose; the latter by hoodwinking their blind father into thinking he was blessing his brother (ch. 27). Zeitlin speaks again: "Once again a patriarch is cast in the role of a 'deceiver'. Evidently this is how the biblical tradition grasped this event, for it even invented an incorrect etymological explanation for the name Jacob as 'trickery'. However, a clue to the real meaning of the episode is the fact that in Hurrian society there was no exclusive right of inheritance belonging to the eldest son. Whether the first-born or the other sons would inherit, was a matter that the father personally decided upon... Perhaps the narrative in its present form, with the element of deception, is the result of folk embellishment and elaboration in the course of oral transmission." One thing this means is that, if true, then if we do not always know what to make of some stories in Genesis, we, in the post-canonical period when the text is in its fixed written form, may not be the first to have had doubts or been confused. Such uncertainties must go a long, long way back and in feeling them we are participating in a truly ancient tradition! But we have the story at least, whether or not we understand it.

Still another strange story in Genesis, involving deception, upon which Zeitlin offers to throw some light is that of Laban's idols. Jacob and his family leave the house of Laban, where Jacob has been working for twenty years, and are heading towards Canaan, but Laban runs after them. They have taken with them the flock of sheep and goats which Jacob considers his rightful payment for his years of service. Rachel has done what seems to us a very strange thing indeed: she has taken her father's house gods with her. When Laban catches up with their party he challenges Jacob on this, Jacob denies it because Rachel hadn't said anything to him about it, a search is carried out and through Rachel's craftiness the gods are not found. Laban accepts defeat and offers to make a pact. And that's the end of that, but one thing is never explained: what did Rachel want Laban's gods for? Zeitlin thinks he knows: "According to Hurrian law, property was normally bequeathed to male offspring. But if a daughter was to share in the inheritance for one reason or another, she received the house gods as proof that she acquired the property legally." Again, this is something that later readers, listeners and editors of the material could not be expected to have known. They would have tried to make their own sense of such strange happenings, but they still remembered that Rachel stole the gods because that is what the story says.

And yet, when all is said and done, we are still faced with stories which, as far as the ordinary reader can see and probably as far as their most recent editor could see also, do seem to involve various forms of deception, and often as in all these examples, it is one of the patriarchs or matriarchs who plays the tricks. What does this tell us about how the Israelites view the characters of their famous first mothers and fathers? Are we to say: Well, it goes to show that they were just human beings like us, neither better nor worse, not idealized demi-gods? Maybe. Anyway, in the form in which the stories have come down all the way to us, for whatever reason, there are acts of deception, and lots of them.

The story of how Jacob worked for seven years to marry Rachel and then had Leah, the older sister whom he clearly did not have the same feelings for, dumped on him for want of a better word (ch. 29), is commonly read as a story of deception too, the trickster this time being Laban. Laban himself justifies this by appealing to the "custom of the place" according to which the younger daughter could not be married before her older sister. Does that mean that Laban did nothing wrong? Why then the subterfuge, sending Leah in to Jacob's tent at night when Jacob was probably too drunk to notice the difference until it was too late: was that the custom of the place too? Like other stories, the details of this one may have shifted and its significance slid over time, but in the form in which we know it there is definitely an element of cheating there, surely.

The story of Laban and Jacob and the goats and the sheep and their speckles, stripes or spots (ch. 30) is so confusing that I am not even sure who is tricking or deceiving whom, but something certainly seems to be going on.

Then there is the story of Jacob's daughter Dina (yes, Jacob had a daughter). A man in the town of Shechem (sh'khem), who is himself called Shechem, abducts Dina, and after first raping her decides to marry her, so his father goes to talk to Jacob. He and his sons are incensed. Yet he replies that he will agree on condition that all the males in Shechem undergo circumcision, then when they are all sore and weak the sons of Jacob go in and slaughter them (ch. 34).

Women can be every bit as tricky as the menfolk in Genesis. In another strange story, Jacob's son Judah gets his comeuppance from a woman whom (in accordance with the customs of the time) he had mistreated by not applying the levirate, a law according to which if a woman is widowed, it is the obligation of the dead husband's brother to step in and give her children in order to keep the hereditary line going. Not to repeat all the details of the case (ch. 38), but Tamar marries one of Judah's sons, who dies, her brother-in-law occupies his place but he too meets a bad end, and Judah, surmising that this woman is bad news, makes excuses and puts her off when Tamar casts her eye on his youngest son. Tamar, showing that Canaanite women could be tricky too, lays an elaborate trap for Judah, and he falls right into it. Posing as a prostitute, she gets Judah to have sex with her and she becomes pregnant. (Let us remember that Tamar isn't actually a prostitute, she only makes Judah think she is one; apparently she is on moral high ground, or at least above sea-level, given that she has been wronged by Judah's family who had the obligation to provide her with offspring under the levirate rule; since Judah withheld his youngest son from her, she seems to have taken this to mean that Judah himself, the father, was fair game. Just for the record...) The interesting twist to this tale is that when Tamar reveals her conspiracy and informs Judah that she is expecting his baby (actually they turned out to be twins!), Judah admits defeat and concedes: "She is more in the right than I, inasmuch as I did not give her to my son Shelah" (38:26). Surely it is more than a little remarkable that such a story has been conserved in Genesis in which a Canaanite woman has the edge over a son of a patriarch (and the father of a tribe of Israel) in guile, resourcefulness and moral rectitude - and wins.

To conclude this review of incidents in Genesis involving deception, consider once more the story of Joseph and his brothers. Jacob may have been a deceiver and a trickster, but he was also sometimes the butt of other people's ruses. I mentioned the little business of Laban and Jacob's marriage to the wrong daughter. Well, if that wasn't bad enough, years later his sons came home and told Jacob that his favourite son Joseph was dead. To convince him, they handed him Joseph's coat of many colours (or whatever garment it really was that Jacob had given him, since the translation is uncertain) stained with blood which they themselves had put on it from a wild animal they had killed for the purpose. Jacob believes them and is heart-broken. It's all a lie of course: Joseph is alive. What goes round comes round, and after several years the brothers are sent by Jacob to Egypt to buy food because there is a shortage, and the man they have to deal with is Joseph, who recognises them but they don't recognise him. Now it is his turn to practise a complicated deception and make a fool of them. First he accuses them of being spies, though he knows they are not, and uses that pretext to imprison Simeon. He also demands that they must bring his full brother Benjamin the next time they come, if they want to get more food and see Simeon again. When they come back with Benjamin he plants his cup on his brother and accuses him of stealing it just to scare them all, threatening to imprison Benjamin to watch his tormentors writhe, since they daren't go home to Jacob without Benjamin. When he decides he has had enough fun, he says, "Only kidding, actually I'm your lost brother Joseph" and watches their faces (ch. 41-2).

Neighbourly relations and pacts

Abram and his family moved to the land of Canaan w'hakk'na‛ani az baáretz "and the Canaanite was then in the land" (12:6). We do not immediately read about the patriarch's dealings with locals in Canaan, however, because according to the next bit of narrative way'hi ra‛av baáretz "there was a famine in the land" (12:10), and so they sojourned in Egypt for a time. Thus we learn about patriarchal relations with Egyptians first, and they do not get off to an excellent start because of a confusion over whether Sarai is Abram's sister or his wife. If Zeitlin is right (see above), this would be the first instance described in the story of the patriarchs of a cultural misunderstanding. Anyway, Pharaoh said to Abram: "Why did you say, 'She is my sister,' so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go" (12:19, ESV). So Abram, Sarai, Lot and the lot of them all left Egypt and went all the way back to Bethel. The next incident is internal to the group: Abram and Lot part ways, w'lo nasa otam haáretz lashévet yaxdaw "the land could not support [both of] them dwelling together" (13:6), whereupon we might say that Lot stopped being a troublesome member of the party and became instead a friendly neighbour (but still not a Canaanite). The text extends itself here in its description of the way in which it was decided who was going to live where: Abram lets Lot choose, telling him hippared na me‛alay im hass'mol w'eymina w'im hayyamin w'asm'ila literally "separate yourself from me, if [to] the left I shall [go] right, if [to] the right I shall [go] left" (13:9), so Lot weighs up his options and chooses the Jordan valley to the east, settling in Sodom, leaving to Abram the hills of Canaan. God then assures Abram he will make his offspring as numerous as the dust of the earth and give them all the land he can see, and instructs Abram: qum hithalekh baáretz l'orkah ul'roxbah "arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land" (13:17). Abram takes up residence b'eloney mamre asher b'xevron "by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron" (13:18).

Then, in the most abrupt change of scene in Genesis, we are at war (ch. 14). Without preamble, we are told about an alliance between several kings against an alliance of several other kings and the fighting that went on this way and that way until eventually we hear that Lot, who was then living in Sodom, has been taken captive, and "then one who had escaped came and told Abram the Hebrew (wayyagged l'avram ha‛ivri), who was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and of Aner. These were allies of Abram" (14:13, ESV). The Israelites are almost never referred to as Hebrews in the (so-called) Hebrew Bible except by foreigners (i.e. non-"Hebrews"); in Genesis, apart from this passing reference, the term ‛ivri (which may be understood as an ethnonym derived from ‛éver = "Eber", a descendent of Shem in the genealogies given after the Flood narrative in ch. 10 and 11) only occurs in the Joseph cycle, and is only spoken by Egyptians; "Hebrew" is thus what is known as an exonym, a term to designate a people not used by the people in question themselves. Therefore, the fact that in ch. 14 there is a reference to avram ha‛ivri (Abram the Hebrew) is taken by many scholars as evidence that this sentence and probably the whole passage (i.e. perhaps chapter 14 in its entirety) is in origin a separate document that was not written by Israelites. And yet, if so, it is a document which talks about Abram! The great significance of this hypothesis is that there is no other independent (i.e. non-Biblical) documentation that directly refers to any of the main characters in the story of the patriarchs, and it is often suggested that they may not have existed as flesh-and-blood individuals; and here is a straw to grasp! I will quote Speiser (Genesis, p. 108):

All this imposes one conclusion above all others which can be of outstanding importance for the study of biblical origins. If Abraham was cited in a historical or quasi-historical narrative that was written not by Israelites but by outsiders, it necessarily follows that Abraham was not a nebulous literary figure but a real person who was attested in contemporary sources.

In any case, returning to my subject here which is the patriarchs' relations and pacts with neighbouring countries and peoples as one of the major themes of the book of Genesis, let us note that the narrative in ch. 14 concludes with friendly conversations between Abram and the king of Sodom, whose name we are not told, and King Malchizedek (malki tzédeq) of Salem (shalem, later to become Jerusalem).

As we know, Abraham's faux-pas concerning the marital status of his wife Sarah was repeated, according to the narrative, years later when they were in Gerar this time (ch. 20), and this led to an altercation with King Abimelech (avimélekh) of Gerar (g'rar). Abraham was supposedly travelling in the Negeb desert around this period, but Gerar is closer to the coast, not far from Gaza. The people there are referred to as p'lishtim, i.e. Philistines (21:32). Abram and Abimelech reach an amicable agreement. Later, Abram has another meeting with Abimelech at Beersheba concerning a dispute over some wells (ch. 21). They negotiate and make a pact.

While on the subject of Gerar, let us recall that Isaac and Rebecca also resided there for a time and had further dealings with King Abimelech regarding both the wife-sister conundrum and well business. And they also made a pact (ch. 26).

Abraham's main place of residence in Canaan was near Hebron (xevron), at the southern end of the favoured route for the patriarchs' comings and goings, which was a north-south one amidst the central hills sandwiched between the plain of the Mediterranean coast and the valley of the River Jordan. At the northern end of this pathway was Shechem (sh'khem), to the north of which was Dotan where Joseph was kidnapped by his brothers. Further south, on the way down to Hebron, was Bethel (beyt el). The actual place near Hebron where Abraham lived was Mamre (mamre). The narrative refers to the locals there as xittim or b'ney xet, Hittites or sons of Het. These are not the same Hittites as the Hittites of old who had a great civilisation in present-day Turkey. They were also not your basic Canaanites, the indigenous Semitic peoples of the area, but had also moved in from somewhere or other. The ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity of the region during the biblical period is quite remarkable. In many ways, the early "Hebrews" must have started out as just one more patch on the quilt.

So when Sarah passed away Abraham went to speak to the b'ney xet who owned the land in Mamre and asked them to sell him a piece of land, Machpelah, to bury his dead in a cave on the property (ch. 23). This scene gives us a glimpse of Abram negotiating and doing business with local landlords. It is clear that he is an outsider (as Lot was, in Sodom), and there is an element of diplomacy in such dealings between Israel's patriarchs and the various components of the surrounding population. This must have been an important part of the patriarchs' lives considering the number of times we find references and even whole scenes about negotiations and pacts between them and the local inhabitants and their rulers and representatives. Most of the arrangements described seem to have been fairly peaceful and civilized, but there are exception, cf. the story of Dina (ch. 34).

There is also a fair amount of wheeling and dealing between people who are ostensibly part of the patriarchal family to start with, and it may be best to classify these too as neighbours because at some point in the text they become metaphors for neighbouring peoples, and where that line is crossed is sometimes a moot point. I've already talked about Lot. Lot is Abraham's nephew, yes, but his sons/grandsons, Moab and Ben-Ami, are the "fathers" of two important neighbouring countries across the Jordan, Moab and Ammon. When the Israelites deal with the Moabites and the Ammonites, it will be as neighbours, not as mishpokhe (family). That is no doubt something to be borne in mind when Genesis talks about pacts and relationships between brothers, cousins and so on, whether it be Isaac and Ishmael (the latter representing peoples of the dessert), Jacob and Esau (who was the father of Edom, to the south of Canaan), Jacob and Laban the Aramaean in ch. 31-2, and so on.

Genesis ends with the children of Israel entering into another pact, this time with their new neighbours the Egyptians (ch. 46-7).