SYNOPSIS: Isaac, now blind and frail,
tells Esau: "I am old, I may die at any time, I want to bless you. Go
hunt some venison and let's have a good meal, then I'll bless you."
Rebecca overhears the conversation and talks Jacob into impersonating
his brother so as to rob him of his blessing. They act out this plan, and it works: Isaac blesses Jacob thinking that he's Esau. Then in comes Esau, only to find his blessing
has been stolen by his little brother. Furious, he swears revenge, and
Rebecca, now fearful, instructs Jacob to run away to his uncle Laban.
Upon discovering that he has been outdone by his brother's trickery and robbed of his father's blessing, Esau bitterly exclaims in 27:36: wayya‛q'véni ze fa‛amáyim et b'khorati laqax w'hinne ‛atta laqax birkhati 'That's twice that he has duped me: he took my birthright, and now he's taken my blessing!' There is a name game here: ya‛aqov 'Jacob' - wayya‛q'véni 'he has tricked me' (root ‛-q-b). EK derives this verb from the noun ‛aqev 'heel', from which the verb's sense must have evolved through some figurative process or other; Esau says 'Jacob heeled me', so to speak; and that, it is implied, is why he is called Jacob. Now 25:26, which described Jacob's birth immediately following his twin brother, said that Jacob emerged with his hand wrapped around Esau's heel (w'yado oxézet ba‛aqev ‛esaw), and so they called him Jacob (wayyiqra sh'mo ya‛aqov). That makes two alternative proposals for deriving Jacob's name, via distinct routes, ultimately from the word ‛aqev (and most likely neither of them has any serious etymological veracity, ma se non è vero...). V. 36 ('That's twice...') also harks back to the story of Jacob's "purchase" of Esau's birthright, which was narrated a few verses later in ch. 25.
Was there really such a complete difference in significance between the b'khora 'birthright' and the b'rakha 'blessing'? CB thinks not, suggesting that they were really two sides of the same coin:
"the blessing was an important element in the birthright, being the
rite, as it were, by which the birthright was bestowed." The commentator
therefore suggests that perhaps the episode with the lentils and the
present scene were in origin two alternative stories developed a
posteriori to explain the actual fact that Jacob rather than Esau became
the patriarchal heir, both of which eventually got woven into a longer narrative framework which incorporates the two anecdotes in question, by situating them at different places in the larger story's timeline. If that is the case, then obviously Esau's "That's twice..." comment did not form part of the original stolen blessing scene per se but had to have been inserted in a later redaction stage.
Be that as it may, as literature read as literature, the drama that is played out in this little masterpiece of narration is extremely poignant and touching, and in that sense reminiscent of other gems in Genesis such as the aqeda story (ch. 22), which incidentally also involves Isaac though there he plays the role of son, and here of father. Curiously, in both stories Isaac is seen as the passive, resigned but righteous "victim" of events that play out around him: the decisions are made by others and he plays along, following the rules of the game. Perhaps he is a bit of a foil, interacting with the true protagonists of each tale and highlighting their characters: Abraham (and God?) in the one, Jacob and Isaac (and also Rebecca, let's not forget her role) in the other.
Neither story is free of moral qualms in the mind of the questioning reader. The moral issues are different: in the event on Mt. Moriah, we are left wondering whether Abraham was right to accept so eagerly such a terrible command, and even whether God was being fair when he issued such an order to Abraham; in the present case, there is a conflict between the reprehensible behaviour of Jacob in plotting to deceive his aged father to wrest something from him that was intended for his brother, and the general tenet of Genesis in which we are meant to think of Jacob as the good guy and the rightful heir. Some will agonise over this puzzle, and others will simply search for ways to rationalize the story or gloss over the tough questions. But once more, as literature, all this surely gives the more depth to it. Whatever the purpose of Genesis is, presenting the patriarchs as impeccable models of perfect ethical conduct is not it, apparently. Not only is Genesis composed of stories, but in those stories live real, three-dimensional characters who are capable of doing both great and petty things. It is perhaps important to understand this when reading it, and that is not always immediately clear to readers on account of the way traditional religious teachings have accustomed us to simplistic moralizing with black-and-white options, coupled with the assumption that scriptures should embody the same view of life. They don't!
27:3 kelékha tely'kha w'qashtékha
The second and third words together are a gloss equivalent to the first, kelékha 'your [hunting] gear', which is generic, while t'li is thought to signify 'quiver', i.e. a "container for arrows, bolts or darts", and qéshet is a bow (such as, metaphorically, the one offered by God to mankind as an ot b'rit after the mabbul). The nature of the weapons or gear is immaterial to the story; a cultural translation might render the three words using whatever would be the suitable equivalent concepts.
27:4 maT‛amim
What Isaac is asking for is presumably a ritual meal attendant upon and ceremonializing the act of bestowing his fatherly blessing on the firstborn son, but it is referred to by this word, only occurring in this passage, which, derived from the root T-‛-m 'to taste, eat' and hence related to the noun Tá‛am 'taste', is assumed to mean 'tasties, savouries, delicacies', which is a fancy way to say 'food, meal, repast' or perhaps, in an idiomatic English sense, 'a dish' (which, when qualified by ka'asher ahávti, seems to beg for the idiomatic rendering 'favourite dish').
nafshi
Remember (see note on 12:13) that this means 'I, me' rather than 'my soul' (KJV). However, some commentators believe the use of the term (which is repeated several times in the passage) carries some ritual significance. Even if it did (and I am not entirely convinced), knowing so doesn't help us much because we are not privy to the nature of that supposed significance. So also in the ensuing dialogue between Jacob and Isaac, we find in v. 19 nafshékha (again referring to Isaac), and nafshi in v. 25, and again in Esau and Isaac's exchange (v. 31 nafshékha).
27:5 shomá‛at
The participle seems to have the sense of 'Rebecca was listening'; the KJV's 'and R. heard' doesn't really reflect the H tense. EAS and JPS 'had been listening' is also acceptable though not obligatory; the only really pertinent feature is the progressive aspect here conveyed by the use of a participle rather than the past tense.
l'havi
Speiser finds this last word of the verse syntactically difficult, saying that "such a phrase without indirect object would violate Heb. usage." He proposes to amend Masoretic להביא l'havi to לאביו l'aviw (or לאביה l'avíhu), which, he conjectures plausibly, stands behind the LXX tôi patri autou 'to his father'. Be that as it may, l'havi is what was transmitted by the Masoretes.
27:7 lifne YHWH
The commentators all emphasize the fact that Rebecca adds these words - 'before the Lord' - whatever their exact meaning. The phrase is repeated by Rebecca in v. 10. Speiser thought it meant "with Y.'s approval".
27:11-12
Commentators are struck by the that that that Jacob expresses no concern about the morality of what Rebecca suggests; he is only afraid of the consequences of being found out!
27:15 bigde ‛esaw... asher ittah babbáyit
CB takes this statement that Esau's clothes were in Rebecca's house as implying Esau was still living with his parents, hence not yet married, which contradicts the chronology of the preceding narrative with the comment about Esau's wives! But see note below on v. 46.
27:18 hinnénni
Thus we see that this reply is not always an expression of obedience, although Abraham seemed to use it with that implication at times.
27:21 ff.
The repetitions and reiterations in this conversation are assumed to have resulted from conflation of source documents. Not only do some things happen twice, but the order doesn't fully make sense: so Isaac is said in v. 23 to bless Jacob (wayvar'khéhu) yet in v. 24 he is back to checking whether it is Esau or not, and further checks lead to his blessing Jacob "again" in v. 27. Some anticipation in the narration might be justifiable, especially if we think of oral delivery, but here it rather seems as if it is the whole sequence that repeats, and that is less easily accounted for. Speiser argues that in v. 23 wayvar'khéhu means 'as he was about to bless him' but presumably in v. 27 it means 'he blessed him'; I find that completely ad hoc given that it is the same verb form in both instances.
27:28-29
The blessing is, as usual, dressed in archaic language and formulaic phrases. CB says that the blessing applies not to Jacob (the character of the narrative) but to Israel (the future nation from Isaac's vantage point). Although the blessing is not quite like any other in its content, it sounds stereotyped and combines the standard concepts customarily found in such benedictions in Genesis. The first clause begins: May God give you (w'yitten l'kha ha'elohim) and the following objects are preceded by partitive mi- (cf. 'eat of the tree...' and so on). Cf. vv. 39-40 below.
27:33 wa'okhal mikkol
'I ate of everything'; but although this is possible, Speiser suggests, convincingly I think, that this might have been a scribal slip, writing consonantal ואכל מכל instead of ואכל אכל wa'okhal akhol 'and (indeed) I ate.'
27:36 wayya‛q'véni ze fa‛amáyim etc.
See my comments at the top of the page.
27:39 hinne mishmanne ha'áretz yihye...
This is taken by commentators as an antithetical "blessing" to that given to Jacob, while also a metaphorical description of the fate of Edom, the southern kingdom which Esau supposedly founded, parallelly to the understanding of Jacob's blessing as that of Israel. It has been pointed out that the mi- which introduces sh'manne ha'áretz 'the fat of the land' and Tal hasshamáyim 'dew of the sky' might be understood partitively (as in v. 28 qv.), although here the verb is not 'give' but 'be' (yihye): ??'your abode will be of the fat of the earth etc.' In that case the phrasing seems rather forced to say the least. But of course mi- has other meanings, and its primary sense is 'from', so it could just as easily mean 'you abode will be [far] from the fat of the earth...', although it has to be said that the syntax remains odd. In the context of the narrative, this makes better sense, since the point is that Esau's blessing is not much of a blessing (or else why would Isaac have told him he couldn't bless him?). The potential ambiguity of mi-, it has been suggested, might have been intentional on the part of the narrator as a kind of irony. That puts translators in a tough position!
27:40b w'haya ka'asher tarid...
Meaning obscure.
27:45 lama eshkal gam sh'nekhem yom exad
The reason why Rebecca says this may seem clear, but the commentators do not all agree on that. While most people including Speiser think it's because if Esau kills Jacob he will be subject to the death penalty or a vengeance killing, CB points out that since Esau proposes to kill Jacob once Isaac is dead, she might just as well be thinking that she didn't want to lose both Isaac and Jacob (Rebecca's husband and her favourite son) at the same time, which would also make sense. All we really know is that Rebecca says to Jacob sh'nekhem 'both of you.'
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