Notes 29: Esau and Jacob are born (25:19-34)

SYNOPSIS: After a period of sterility, Isaac's wife Rebecca has a difficult pregnancy, and gives birth to twins "fighting in the womb". Esau, red and hairy, is born first but is followed straight away by Jacob, described almost comically as "holding on to Esau's heel" (a pun to explain his name). God forecasts to Rebecca that they will be two nations but the older will serve the younger. Esau, who is Isaac's favourite, turns into a hunter, whereas Jacob is quite the opposite, a stay-in-the-tent type who likes to cook, and Rebecca's pet. One day Esau comes home from the hunt, famished, to find Jacob stirring the stew and begs for "some of that red stuff". Jacob serves him a bowl, and charges him his birthright. Esau is silly enough to reply: "Deal."

• Text of the passage in Nawat

Whatever other function it has in the narrative development, this passage, consisting of two episodes (the birth of Esau and Jacob and the acquisition by the latter of the former's birthright), is by unanymous consensus on the allegorical level about the relationship between the neighbouring nations of Edom (represented by Esau) and Israel (i.e. Jacob). The oracle in v. 23 (see below) speaks of the twin nations separating in the womb (b'viTnekh... yipparédu). However, equally clear is the insinuation that the two peoples (l'ummim) who will emerge share the same origin.  The historical Edom was located to the south of Canaan. It has been suggested that this little ditty was of ancient origin, which would suggest that perhaps the narrative of the birth of Rebecca's twins was composed around it in a later epoch.

Rebecca's role here should not be forgotten. In the second patriarchal generation, of Isaac and Rebecca it is the latter who makes the greater impact as a strong, active character in the story, in which Isaac takes very much the back seat. Fox calls her a "true dynamic character", pointing out (EF, p. 103):

It is she to whom God reveals his plan, and she who puts into motion the mechanism for seeing that it is properly carried out. She is ultimately the one responsible for bridging the gap between the dream, as typified by Avraham, and the hard-won reality, as realized by Yaakov.

When she goes through a difficult pregnancy, Rebecca takes her complaint directly to God, who answers her with a promise. Isaac doesn't actually do very much. And notice that between Esau and Jacob, he backs the wrong horse, while it is Rebecca who favours, supports and saves Jacob, paying for his future at a very high price, for she must send her favourite son away from her at a young age, never to see him again.

The older brother serving the younger is a recurrent theme throughout Genesis, as we have seen, and it is interesting that it is in the role of "the younger" that Israel clearly casts itself in this passage. This is surely the meaning of the relationship depicted in the book between Jacob and Esau, and subsequently even more graphically between Joseph and his ten older half-brothers. 

It is soon clarified that the two peoples mentioned in the oracle poem are, respectively, Edom, who is there called rav (usually meaning 'numerous' but in this context designating the senior or older "brother") and Israel (= tza‛ir, the junior sibling). "The younger shall serve the older" says the last line (w'rav ya‛avod tza‛ir), a point which will be reiterated in Isaac's unwitting blessing of Jacob later in life; this is clearly no passing comment, it is an idea that gets centrestaged over and over again in this part of the book. So what's up? Speiser (EAS p. 194-5) observes that in ancient Akkadian law, the exact cognates of rav and tza‛ir were actually legal designations referred to in inheritance law. The share inherited by the elder brother was double that received by the younger. Nonetheless, Hurrian law allowed for a son who was not biologically the oldest to be designated as the legal rav, and that is what must have taken place between Esau and Jacob (though the motivation described for the changeover is a rather strange one). The way in which this comes about in the story may be considered anecdotal, but the legal transaction invoked, on the contrary, provided a legitimate framework, within the Hurrian cultural coordinates assumed for the patriarchs by Speiser, whereby a younger brother could end up with the bulk of the father's inheritance. However, of course Genesis is not primarily concerned about the economic side of this inheritance, but rather the all-important b'rit between God and Abraham's seed, and as will be clarified later, this is also to be inherited by Jacob and his sons: the children of Israel.

 The contrast described in v. 27 between the two brothers (Esau is a hunter and a man of the woods, Jacob is a quiet tent-dweller) is somewhat reminiscent of the first brothers (Cain farmed, Abel tended a flock). Although not identical, both dichotomies refer to different forms of economy and consequent lifestyles. This seems to be a commonplace theme in old folk stories around the world. It might be thought unusual in the real world, especially in ancient and traditional societies, for members of the same family to practise radically different modi vivendi, and perhaps the opposition of occupations is originally symbolic, representing different kinds of society which coexisted historically, sometimes sharing or vying for the same territory. And it is also true, in deep historical perspective, that these types of society and economy are really "brothers" in the sense that they evolved over time either from a common source or one out of the other. In that context it is very interesting to see, in such narratives, which one is described as the older brother and how relations between them are portrayed, as this might bear, if not on the prehistoric process itself, at least on the way the society that produced the narrative perceived the relationship between these stages of socio-economic development. The fact that it so constantly turns out that the younger brother, overturning the time-honoured status quo, outdoes, overtakes or even displaces the older looks like nothing so much as an allegorization of social and economical revolution and human progress. The old ways are implied to be clumsy, ineffectual and destined to fall by the wayside; the new are sharper, impertinent perhaps, upstarts at first, but ultimately better equipped to deal with the world and forge ahead towards a brighter future.

So the real focus of the story is always on Jacob; in fact, Fox believes that it is neither Abraham nor Joseph, but Jacob who is the real central figure of Genesis (EF, p. 103):

Avraham is a towering figure, almost unapproachable as a model in his intimacy with God and his ability to hurdle nearly every obstacle. Adding to this the fact that Yitzhak is practically a noncharacter, and that Yosef, once his rise begins, also lacks dimension as a personality, it becomes increasingly clear that it is Yaakov who emerges as the most dynamic and most human personality in the book. The stories about him cover fully half of Genesis, and reveal a man who is both troubled and triumphant. Most interestingly, he, and not Avraham, gives his name to the people of Israel.

25:22 im ken lámma ze anókhi
This utterance is described by commentators as an incomplete sentence but perhaps it was meant to be pragmatically complete: lámma ze anókhi seems to be an expression of exasperation, perhaps like a colloquial "Why me?!" The conjectures of ways to complete the sentence that would be grammatically complete and make sense in the context of the story strike me as artificial and unnecessary. In another outburst, this time annoyed by Esau's mariage to Hittite girls and concerned lest Jacob might follow suit, Rebecca utters another three-word rhetorical question beginning with lámma in 27:56, and Esau himself expresses himself in somewhat similar terms in v. 32 of the present passage.

wattélekh lidrosh et YHWH
In this context, d-r-sh may be understood as something like 'consult, seek advice from.'

25:23
An "oracle" in solemn poetic form, carefully worded and stylistically balanced. Accurate translation of such segments is a delicate and critical matter. It consists of two statements, each of which is in turn made up of two related predications:

sh'ne goyim b'viTnekh
ush'ne l'ummim mimme‛áyikh yipparédu
ul'om mil'om ye'ematz
w'rav ya‛avod tza‛ir

The first part applies a single verb to both parallel assertions, yippar'du 'will be divided or separated', which at least in the case of b'viTnekh cannot mean ...from the mother's womb and so can only be taken to mean ...from each other. 

25:31 mikhra
The verb root m-k-r is said to have meant 'to barter' as well as 'to sell.'

b'khorat'kha
The birthright (b'khora) was the ancient institution of inheritance favouring, usually, the firstborn child.

25:34 wayyívez
From b-z-h 'to despise, think lightly of.'