Note: You can watch this teaching on CrossWalk’s YouTube channel.
Don Corleone. Superman. Jimmy Garoppolo. James Bond. Bono. If these guys were on posters, which would you use to adorn your bedroom walls? Which would you want as a business partner, or best friend, or a sibling, or to marry your daughter, or vote for president? Which would you choose as a role model?
As part of our Ancestors series, today we turn our attention to Jacob, one of the grandsons of Abraham. Jacob wasn’t like Abraham. Everybody seems to like Abraham, for the most part, due to his unwavering faithfulness. I’m not sure how many people would choose Jacob for their business partner, best friend, sibling, daughter’s husband, or president, let alone role model. Do you remember his story? If not, take some time to read it in Genesis 25-35. Here’s a recap of some of the major stories recorded for us…
· When Jacob was in utero, he wrestled with his fraternal twin, grabbing his heel as his brother, Esau, entered the world first, becoming the older brother.
· When the brothers were older, Jacob took advantage of his brother’s hunger and swindled the birthright for a bowl of stew. Of course, that meant Esau went along with it – both choices less than ideal. The younger brother acquired the oldest brother’s birthright. Remember that – it will happen again.
· When their father, Isaac, was getting older and weaker, he told Esau to hunt some wild game and make a stew for him, at which point the father would sign over his portfolio to his oldest son. Esau neglected to tell his dad about forfeiting his birthright (and apparently Jacob never mentioned it, either), so off he went to hunt down a deer. Rebekah, Jacob’s mother, overheard the conversation and helped Jacob trick his dad into thinking he was Esau in order to receive the blessing. Needless to say, Isaac felt duped and Esau was enraged, likely ready to hunt down a shifty brother for his next kill. The younger brother acquired the oldest brother’s right to the estate and the blessing of the patriarch. Remember that – it will show up again.
· Jacob fled for his life by running to his Uncle Laban’s ranch. While there, he fell in love with Laban’s younger daughter, Rachel (his cousin!), and worked a deal to acquire her as his wife in exchange for seven years of labor. On the wedding night, however, Laban sent his older, less becoming daughter, Leah, into the bed to welcome an unsuspecting, likely drunk groom. Upon waking the next morning, he discovered that he’d been bamboozled. Now irrevocably married to Leah, he agreed to work another seven years for Rachel (again). I guess we know which side of the family the deceptive genes came from…
· After nearly twenty years of service to Laban, making him a wealthy man, Jacob asked for his due wages. Laban, who ripped him off many-a-time, proposed a settlement: Jacob could have all but the pure white goats. All the speckled, striped, and black goats and sheep would be Jacob’s. Realizing that Jacob was his golden-egg-laying goose, Laban took all of the current non-white animals for himself, so that any non-white ones would have to be bread from white ones. In other words, Laban ripped him off again. Yet the 4-H competition was on! Jacob, true to form, used a folklore trick to insure he walked away with way more animals than Laban. He was now pretty rich, and ready to return to his homeland.
· Esau was still in the homeland, however, and heard of Jacob’s homecoming. He gathered up 400 of his men (he was rich) for a welcoming party (?!). News of this show of force made its way to Jacob. Knowing he needed to cut a deal, and perhaps save his own skin, he had his entire household sleep on one side of the river while he slept on the other (so he could escape more easily, perhaps?). The next day he paraded his holdings as if to announce to his older brother that he came with a peace offering. It turned into a peaceful reconciliation where Esau welcomed Jacob back, and only took the gifts after much insistence from his younger brother.
· Jacob’s character traits continued to bleed through his life story. As his father Isaac did to him, he showed favoritism to one of his sons over the others (the second-to-youngest), causing great enmity between the siblings.
Jacob was no Superman who was incapable of being swayed toward dishonesty. In contrast, Jacob was a complex character, a very human being who was a strong mixture of all that is beautiful and wonderful and also all that is self-serving and destructive. Jacob, not Abraham, is the person God wanted the Jewish people to see themselves in. For this reason, after that mysterious wrestling match the night before reuniting with his brother, that WWE-messenger-representative of God gave him a new name: Israel, which translates wrestles with God. Hmmm.
He didn’t rename Abraham to a name that translates “faithful to God” for the national identity. Nope. The name of the nation would be forever tied to “wrestling with God.” Why do you suppose this is the way things played out? What do you suppose it meant for the Israelites in Babylonian captivity? What might it mean now for all people of faith who are trying to follow the God we see in Genesis?
Renaming Jacob to Israel was just brilliant. The name would forever encourage those who “own” it to keep perspective, realizing that, like Jacob, they are not innocent, but are capable of all of the less flattering attitudes and behaviors displayed in their namesake. The cycle of Israel’s history was one of choosing to be faithful followed by fading faithfulness followed by painful consequences that come from drawing from a source that is not God, not Love. In time, Israel as a whole would struggle their way to repentance – turning toward – God, who was always faithful to re-engage their covenant relationship.
Personally, we would do well to remember our faith’s poster child as well. While we look to Jesus as the model of our faith, we may be wise to keep a picture of Jacob/Israel nearby. We need the same perspective this provided for the Jewish people. Such perspective hopefully engenders a humility that will keep us honest with the tension between our self-centered tendencies that can so often lead to destructive ends and the Way of the Spirit of God which is the source of life, love, restoration, creation – all the fruits that are beautiful and good. What can we do to be consistently aware of the wrestling match about which we seem to be oblivious much of the time, and therefore inclined toward less than ideal choices?
Recently, I was listening to a well-respected meditation teacher who shared a tip she incorporated into her personal practice many years ago. Anybody who meditates knows that one of the problems is that our minds can go a little crazy. We can be flooded with an endless assault of thoughts and ideas, or even as we sit and try to be still, something may distract us and our mind is off to the races. Focusing on breathing is the foundation for a lot of meditative practice. Simply calming ourselves with such focus does amazing things for us mentally, emotionally, and physically. All by focusing attention on the breath. The instructor employs a simple technique to stay focused on her breath. When she inhales and exhales, focusing on her breath, she simply says (in her mind), “breath.” When her mind wanders (and she recognizes it) she simply says, “not breath.” So simple, yet so effective at staying on track with something that generates so many positive benefits.
The Hebrew and Greek words that give us the word Spirit are the same that give us the word for breath. I wonder if we would be well-served by the meditation teacher’s little trick, paying attention to our lives as we live day to day, hour by hour and moment by moment, identifying whether or not we are focusing on Breath (as in the Spirit of God) or something much less life-giving. Such a simple practice that I think has the capacity to create a deep mindfulness that may just help us stay connected to God and all that God touches. I believe this is what Jesus learned to do, which then shaped him into the man he became.
But how do we know if what is guiding us is Breath or Not-Breath? Asking the question is likely the most important first step. Self-awareness is really important if we hope for the kind of holistic well-being that is central to the salvation proclaimed by Jesus and offered by God from the very beginning. Having Jacob as a negative example to use for reference helps. How are we driven by our own selfish interests which so often translate into behavior that is truly unloving toward others and ultimately unloving toward ourselves? How do we deceive ourselves even as we deceive others? Are we aware of our resident potential for unhealth? Jacob’s selfish desire led him to manipulate his brother and lie to his father. He was sneaky and self-serving. I wonder how this played out in every aspect of his life? I bet it did in myriad ways.
Jesus assured us that we are not made to become legalistic robots. Later, Paul declared that such an approach would actually lead to death, not life. Jesus said that the whole of the Jewish law (which was given to guide toward life) could be fulfilled in focusing on just two commands: love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. So simple, and yet so profound. Neither Esau nor Jacob operated out of either focus of love in the dinner transactions for birthright or blessing. Who knows how things might have turned out if they did? When we love God – which really means that we root ourselves in the Breath, aligning ourselves with the Spirit of God, being motivated by what motivates God, being animated with God’s Person, we are changed. We see ourselves and others differently. Loving our neighbor becomes natural, effortless, and generous. Augustine thought that if we simply focused on loving God, everything else will take care of itself: “Love God and do what you please.”
Are you aware of what you are breathing? Are you conscious of when it is Breath or Not-Breath? Where is there a lack of wholeness in your life? Perhaps that’s one indicator of an area that needs some new breathing…
There are tools that help with this. The Enneagram Institute offers an assessment that helps you identify your personality according to nine different types (which expand to 27 variations). You can invest $12 for their comprehensive assessment (the best), or get an app on your phone/tablet – the EnneaApp is one of the best as it links you to the Enneagram Institute. One of the great gifts offered by the Enneagram is a fairly accurate picture of what we look like when we are healthy, average, and unhealthy. Knowing what these zones look like provide references for our particular lives. Knowing what unhealthy looks like, and being aware of it, I am more likely to catch it when I pull a “Jacob maneuver”. On the upside, knowing the traits of health for my type serve to guide me like the North Star toward freedom, especially since health in this regard is deeply tied to maturity, wellbeing, shalom.
Incorporating the Prayer of Examen with this turbo-charges our capacity for self-reflection, awareness, and growth. This daily practice of simply checking in with ourselves is so helpful, especially when combined with regular meditation that helps us quiet ourselves enough to be able to really pay attention.
So, Israel, your life is behind you and before you. Who have you been? Who do you want to be?
Notes to Nerd Out On…
Add these books to your reading list for reference on Genesis: Genesis for Normal People by Pete Enns, brings excellent academics with very approachable writing (he is fun to listen to and read); and In the Beginning by the great historian Karen Armstrong, which offers a Midrash approach to the texts.
From the Yale Anchor Bible Dictionary (Stanley D. Walters):
JACOB NARRATIVE. Jacob was the younger son of Isaac and Rebekah, twin brother of Esau, and father of the 12 sons after whom were named the 12 tribes of Israel. He is the central figure in the cycle of stories in Gen 25:19–35:29 and reappears as a lesser figure in the Joseph stories (Genesis 37–50). In separate popular etymologies, the Heb name yaʿăqōb is connected with Heb ʿāqēb, “heel,” because Jacob was born clutching the heel of his brother Esau (Gen 25:26), and with the verb ʿāqab, “cheat,” because Esau said that Jacob had cheated him twice (27:36). The name may be a shortened form of Heb yʿqb-ʾl, “God protects,” a name known from extrabiblical sources (Noth 1953). Jacob later received the name “Israel” as a mark of his struggle (32:29) and piety (35:10), and his descendants were later identified by this name (“children of Israel”).
Biblical Jacob is unknown outside the Bible, although the general congruence of the patriarchal narratives with customs and artifacts known from archaeology to belong to the 2d millennium (especially the material from Nuzi and Mari) has sometimes been used to support his historicity. Later scrutiny called much of that argument into question (Van Seters 1975; Thompson 1974) on the grounds that the alleged parallels were inexact or unrepresentative, or had been misunderstood. For example, the claim that possession of household idols (Gen 31:19) helped constitute the family of Jacob as a legitimate clan has been given up (Selman 1980: 110). Some writers have refused even to attempt historical reconstructions (HAIJ, 79). Where historical questions remain open, Jacob has been dated to the 1900s b.c.e. (Bimson 1980: 84), and a number of extrabiblical customs are seen to retain their pertinence (Selman 1980: 125–229; see also Morrison 1983).
Until recently, critical scholarship assumed that the documentary hypothesis was a key to understanding the Jacob material, namely, strands of J and E with later additions or redaction by P (Van Seters 1975 dates J to the Exile rather than to the time of Solomon; CMHE, 293–325, and Hendel 1987 hold to the early oral-epic origin of J E, enlarged and ordered by P late in the Exile). Noth had postulated an East-Jordan Jacob and a West-Jordan Jacob, the latter stories being secondary and less interesting (HPT, 89ff.). Farmer (1978) approaches the story as folklore, focusing on how trickster figures such as Jacob and Samson, operating from a position of weakness, trick others or are themselves tricked. Oden (1983) employs data from the field of anthropology.
Meanwhile a plethora of holistic literary treatments have appeared, based on a reassessment of the form and style of “narrative” (Frei 1974; Alter 1981) and reflecting a fundamental hermeneutic shift. In general, this approach does not deny the composite character of the Jacob material, but downplays the cycle’s prehistory in favor of questions of meaning, and it sets aside historical questions as inappropriate to the material (Fokkelman 1975; Clines 1978; Buss 1979; Thompson 1987). Such is the general perspective of the present article, which is more about the Jacob cycle than about Jacob and is literary rather than biographical in method.
A. Structure of the Jacob Cycle
B. The Cycle’s Stories
C. Meaning
A. Structure of the Jacob Cycle
The stories of the Jacob cycle have been artfully arranged to gather around Jacob’s return to the land of his birth, Canaan, after a hasty flight and long residence abroad to avoid his brother’s revenge. They are thus informed by a dual tension: (1) How can the duplicitous Jacob become the father of God’s people? and (2) How can he inherit the promise made to Abraham and Isaac if he leaves the land which God has given to them? The fundamental theme of the cycle has to do with the life and character of “Israel,” that is, the people of God. The Jacob stories are about the essence and meaning of a people (Thompson 1987: 39–40). The biblical text presents the Jacob stories in a concentric pattern which has been independently observed by several scholars (Fishbane 1975; see also Fokkelman 1975: 240; Gammie 1979; otherwise Hendel 1987: 144, n. 20) and which is signalled both by cross-references in vocabulary and by thematic similarities. The cycle breaks into 2 equal halves at Gen 30:24–25, each having 7 matching segments, presented thematically in exact reverse order. The entire cycle is bracketed at beginning and end by genealogies of the 2 sons who stand outside the line of promise, Ishmael (25:12–18) and Esau (chap. 36), so that Jacob’s role as the bearer of the promise is unmistakable.
The Unchosen Son (Ishmael) (25:12–18)
A. Beginings. Birth, prediction, early conflict between Jacob and Esau (25:19–34)
B. Relations with indigenous population (26:1–22)
C. Blessing obtained [“He took away (lāqaḥ) my bĕrākâ” (27:35–36)] (27:1–40)
D. Jacob’s flight from Esau (27:41–28:5)
E. Encounter with God’s agents (28:10–22)
F. Arival in Haran: Rachel, Laban (29:1–30)
G. Children: Jacob acquires a family (30:1–24)
Jacob’s return to Canaan begins as soon as Joseph is born
G´ Flocks: Jacob aquires wealth (30:25–43)
F´ Departure from Haran: Rachel, Laban (31:1–32:1—Eng 31:1–55)
E´ Encounter with God’s agent (32:2–3—Eng 32:1–2)
D´ Jacob’s approach to Esau (32:4–33—Eng 32:3–32)
C´ Blessing returned [“Accept (lāqaḥ) my bĕrākâ” (33:11)] (33:1–20)
B´ Telations with indigenous population (chap. 34)
A´ Endings. Death, fulfillment, Jacob and Esau together (chap. 35)
The Unchosen Son (Esau) (chap. 36)
The 2 segments on Esau’s wives which frame segment C (26:34–35; 28:6–9) seem to stand outside the above topical descriptions.
Some of the thematic correspondences are especially clear. For example, segments B/B´ both deal with relations between the people of the promise and the indigenous residents of Canaan, in sharply contrasting modes. In terms of narrative sequence, however, B is out of order (since the twins have not yet been born, 26:11), and belongs to the 20-year period of Rebekah’s barrenness (25:20, 26); its chronological dislocation was necessary for it to function topically in the cycle. Placement and juxtaposition are among the writer’s major techniques.
This topical match between the segments in each of the halves is confirmed by several striking cross-references in writing. The numinous experiences in E/E´ each feature God’s “agents” (or “angels”), an expression recurring nowhere else in the Bible. The same 2 sections also use the Hebrew verb pāqaʿ, “encounter,” which occurs nowhere else in the sense of “reach a place,” suggesting that the writer chose the unusual verb at 28:10 in order to effect the linkage with E´. Again, the occurrence of bĕrākâ “blessing” in the antonymic expressions “he took away your/my blessing” and “accept my blessing,” both with the verb lāqaḥ, “take,” is the thread connecting segments C/C´.
Thus the cycle is not only a narrative sequence with its own inner movement, but an artful arrangement which invites the reader to compare each segment with its complement later (or earlier) in the sequence.
To illustrate: segments A/A´ clearly open and close the cycle. Certain information is repeated from earlier in Genesis in order to give the cycle a proper beginning: Isaac’s birth (21:1–5), marriage (24:67), and Rebekah’s family (24:15, 29), adding the characterization “Aramean.” An oracle predicts that Rebekah’s children will become two “nations,” one submissive to the other. The twins are born, and both their prenatal struggle (v 22) and Jacob’s manipulation of Esau (vv 27–34) prefigure Jacob’s character as a loner who lives by his wits at the expense of other people, as well as the bad blood between the twins (chap. 27) and the later hostility between Israel and Edom (36:1, 8–9, 19; cf. Ps 137:7; Ezekiel 35).
A´ echoes the theme of A in conclusion: the deaths of Isaac, Jacob’s wife Rachel, and Rebekah’s nurse Deborah; Jacob’s 12 sons are listed by name and mother, a “nation”; the twins, having come together (chap. 33), stand at their father’s grave; and Jacob appears as a religious reformer (vv 1–7) and recipient of the full divine promise (vv 9–25).
B. The Cycle’s Stories
Segment A (25:19–34). Jacob and Esau were born as a result of Isaac’s intercession with God, because Rebekah (like Sarah before her and Rachel after her) was barren; offspring are the gift of God. Among the Bible’s several husbands of barren wives, only Isaac prayed for a change (contrast Jacob in Gen 30:2), marking him as a man of piety and intimating a synergism which runs throughout the whole cycle.
Rebekah’s only words in this section arise out of the prenatal jostling of the twins, but the Hebrew sentence is incomplete: “If so, why am I …?” The text leaves Rebekah musing uncertainly about the events which her pregnancy portends; hers is an unfinished question, a verbless and ambiguous reflection which prefigures her incomplete and partial role in the cycle as a whole, just as the jostling forecasts enmity between the twins.
The oracle which she sought disclosed that her children would become separate peoples of unequal power, and that the nation springing from the older would be submissive to the younger. By identifying the sons with the peoples who sprang from them, the oracle at once implies a collective as well as an individual reading of the stories that follow: They recount the outward and inner movements of Jacob, the son of Isaac and Rebekah; but they refer also to the movements, the calling, and the character of the people named “Israel” after him. A collective reference is also suggested by the allusions associated with the naming of Esau: His hirsute appearance at birth (Heb śēʿār, 25:25; 27:11) alludes to his country Seir (33:16), while his ruddy color (Heb ʾadmônı̂, v 25) and preference for red stew (Heb hāʾādōm, v 30) refer to his region Edom. By contrast, the name Jacob is explained with reference to personal behavior, since the collective reference belongs especially to his second name, Israel.
The narrative moves from the birth of the twins directly to an event showing that their relationships as adults realized the conflict portended by prenatal and birth events. Jacob took advantage of Esau’s fatigue and hunger by requiring him to trade his birthright for some food. The cycle has thus barely opened when Esau has ceded to Jacob the bĕkōrâ, his inheritance rights as firstborn. In a rare show of appraisal, the text says that Esau “spurned” his birthright. Yet, Jacob’s behavior was hardly exemplary: His hand was clearly on Esau’s heel, and the pairing of this episode with the birth story types Jacob’s character as the grasping and manipulative.
This falls short of expectations, as compared with Abraham and Isaac and in view of Jacob’s subsequent role as the father of the Israelite people. The dissonance is even in the text, for in the parallel description of the twins’ way of life (25:27), opposite the assessment “Esau was a skillful hunter,” we read, “Jacob was a blameless man” (Heb ʾı̂š tām, exactly as Job 1:8; 2:3). Translations use attenuated words (“plain” KJV, “quiet” RSV, “mild” JPS), but tām clearly implies moral excellence. This, then—moral excellence—is to be Israel’s vocation; and the same story which asserts it so boldly goes on to show Jacob as something other than blameless. The disparity introduces a tension at the beginning of the cycle which is not fully relaxed until the end.
Segment B (26:1–33). This story belongs chronologically to the time before the twins were born, but its placement within the cycle gives it pertinence to him. It opens with a direct reference to Abraham’s behavior in an earlier famine (v 1: the reference is thematic, not chronological, since a minimum of 64 years in narrative time separates the 2 [10 years 16:3; 14 years 16:16 and 21:5; 40 years 26:20]). As Abraham had done, Isaac started out for Egypt, but in the “Philistine” city of Gerar, God appeared to warn against leaving the land and to reiterate to Isaac the Abrahamic promise of land and progeny (vv 2–5).
Isaac’s anxiety over their safety in Gerar proved to be unfounded (vv 6–11), and the juxtaposition of this episode to v 5’s prolix “my charge, my commandments, my laws, my teachings,” suggests that residence in the land also required obedience to the divine pattern for life. To “remain in the land” is synonymous with obedience to Torah (Ps 37:3).
The use of “Philistine” suggests the story’s rise at a time when relations with the Philistines were a problem to Israel. In the cycle, however, they typify the land’s indigenous residents, because Isaac visits them as a stranger and is subject to pressure from them.
Isaac’s prosperity under divine blessing led to envy and to contention over water rights; he had to move several times, thereby surrendering valuable excavated wells in the process, before finding “space” (vv 12–22; “Rehoboth” is symbolic). Following this sacrificial determination to occupy the land amicably, another divine appearance (at the pilgrim site of Beer-sheba) reiterated the promise of progeny, and added the promise of God’s presence (v 24, unique to the Jacob cycle, see also 28:15, 20; 35:3).
A final threatening approach of the Philistines resulted in a treaty (Heb bĕrı̂t “covenant”) between the 2 groups, sealed with a feast and the exchange of oaths (vv 23–33). The treaty episode interrupts the account of digging one more well (vv 25b, 32), so that the servant’s report, “We have found water,” takes on symbolic importance: Water is life, especially in the arid Negeb where Beer-sheba is located, and so also is the treaty life. Isaac has shown that it is possible to occupy the land of promise, to observe Torah, to prosper, and to maintain good relations with the other residents. He has found life. The other treaty, between God and Abraham, is also in the background: Although the word bĕrı̂t is not used in the promise reports of chap. 26, it has been used in the earlier promises which are now being extended to Isaac (15:8; chap. 17); it, too, is life.
This segment on indigenous relations stands between 2 sections (A and C) on relations between Jacob and Esau, which are marked as a pair by common themes (e.g., Jacob outwits Esau to his own advantage) and by similar key words, such as bĕkōrâ and bĕrākâ (“birthright” and “blessing”). These words not only sound alike but are visually similar on the written page—bkrh and brkh—being distinguished only by the transposition of the middle 2 consonants.
This placement both links Isaac’s example with the subsequent B´, a different mode of engagement with the people of the land, and unmistakably juxtaposes Isaac’s style of relationship to Jacob’s. The juxtaposition announces, “Jacob may be living by strife and deceit, but if you want to see life under the promise, in the middle of all the ambiguity of threatening sociopolitical relationships, take a look at Isaac.” The story also stresses the need for the recipients of the promise to maintain residence in the land, something which will add additional tension in segment C.
Segment C (27:1–40). In the second of the paired stories of dealings between Jacob and Esau, Rebekah led Jacob to deceive his father into bestowing the patriarchal blessing—bĕrākâ—on him instead of on Esau the firstborn. Jacob disguised himself as Esau, and, although the blind Isaac was never free from suspicion, the ruse worked: The father ate his favorite dish and conferred on Jacob a promise of agricultural prosperity and hegemony over other people, including his brother (vv 28–29). Only when Esau actually showed up to receive the blessing did Isaac discover the trick; the blessing was already Jacob’s, but Isaac gave Esau a similar promise of bounty along with the promise that he should eventually free himself from Jacob’s yoke (vv 39–40).
This detailed and extended story—7 times as long as the bĕkōrâ—shows Jacob firmly in the legal and financial position of the firstborn. Both stories involve manipulation, and both involve meals, to which Isaac’s amicable covenant meal with Abimelech is a pointed contrast. They offer complementary explanations of Jacob’s priority, the shorter being more favorable to Jacob (there is no outright deception, and Esau “spurns” his birthright), the latter being marked by a deliberate and callous duplicity involving Rebekah as prime mover (the verbs in vv 14–17 have Rebekah, not Jacob, as their subject). Jacob’s impersonation of Esau symbolizes his priority: He dresses in Esau’s clothes and simulates Esau’s tomentose appearance (vv 15–16); he smells of the outdoors (v 27); he twice says, “I am your firstborn” (vv 19, 24). He has taken Esau’s place.
The Masoretic editors of the Hebrew text have signalled this in another way in Isaac’s reply to Jacob’s address in v 18. Isaac says “Yes?” (Heb hinnennı̂), a common locution normally spelled hinnēnı̂, but with 2 doubled “n”s only here and in Gen 22:7 where Isaac’s address to Abraham and the father’s reply are in the identical words. In both stories the father replies to the younger but favored son.
This linkage also highlights the tension which the second episode of cheating introduces into the cycle. In Gen 22:7 Isaac was the obedient and compliant son, enquiring about sacrificial procedures; but in Gen 27:18 Jacob—equally born by divine intervention—says, “I am Esau, your firstborn.” How can such mendacity inherit and bear the promise? And indeed, the fathers’ replies in each case signal this, for Abraham said to Isaac, “Yes, my son,” but Isaac said to Jacob, “Yes, who are you, my son?” Thus, one of the central themes of the whole cycle of stories comes to expression—the unclear identity of Jacob.
The story expresses this ambiguity in other ways. In talking to Rebekah about the deception, Jacob offered descriptions of both himself and Esau (v 11), in which there are wordplays pointing beyond the immediate situation. Esau, said Jacob, is a hairy man (Heb ʾı̂š śāʿir). The adjective is a homophone of śāʿı̂r “he-goat, buck,” and thus alludes playfully to Esau’s outdoor life and to the skins of kids with which Jacob disguised himself (v 16). I, said Jacob, am a smooth man (Heb ʾı̂š ḥālāq). The same adjective occurs elsewhere of deceptive speech (Prov 5:3; 26:28). Who are you, Jacob? By his own mouth, he is not a “blameless man” (25:27), but a “slippery man.”
Although Isaac could give the patriarchal blessing to only one of his sons, he also gave Esau a promise very similar in that it predicted the same agricultural boons—the fat of the land and the dew of heaven (in reverse order, vv 28 and 39). Translations usually obscure this similarity, since the preposition min can mean both “have a share in” and “be far from,” but the reader of the story in Hebrew may wonder if there is still a chance for Esau to recoup his position, especially since Isaac told him he would throw off Jacob’s yoke.
Segment D (27:41–28:5). Esau’s anger at a second supplanting (v 36) made it necessary for Jacob to flee, and his mother arranged his departure for her own country where he could stay with her brother Laban (vv 41–45), representing the trip to Isaac as required so that Jacob should not marry a local woman (27:46–28:5). Classical literary criticism has seen these two sets of arrangements as duplicate accounts from different sources: The former, which calls Rebekah’s homeland “Haran,” from JE, and the latter, using “Paddan-aram” from P. But each paragraph plays its own role in the movement of the narrative.
This sly provision for Jacob’s sudden need to leave home is the cycle’s final glimpse of Rebekah. Her last words follow the “if … then …” pattern of her first (25:22), but here the sentence is complete: lāmmâ lı̂ ḥayyı̂m “What good will life be to me?” (v 46). These 2 sentences—freighted with import by their position—show Rebekah preoccupied with her own feelings and well-being. Her single significant action has been to engineer the deception by which her second-born son Jacob, instead of Esau her firstborn, received Isaac’s blessing. Her way of life has affinities with that of her brother Laban (29:15–30; 31:6–7, 14–15, 41–42), and Jacob’s own slippery character displays a family resemblance.
This way of life is new in the Genesis narratives. Apart from their lies about their wives (chaps. 12, 20, 26), both Abraham and Isaac are exemplary persons, and in chap. 26 Isaac is conscientious and sacrificial in his relations with the herdsmen of Gerar. The term “Aramean,” found first in Rebekah’s genealogy (25:20; 28:5) and elsewhere applied to Laban alone (31:20, 24), while obviously denoting the N Syrian region of their origin as “Aram,” seems also to connote this behavioral pattern in the Haran side of the family; “Aramean” is new in the Jacob cycle, even though all the other genealogical information of 25:20 is already found in 24:15, 28.
It is thus a central tension within the cycle whether Jacob will actually become the chosen leader which later Israelites knew him to be. His departure from Canaan raises the possibility that he has abandoned the land promised to Abraham and which Isaac has resolutely occupied at great cost (chap. 26), and has adopted another way of life altogether. Deut 26:5 describes him as “an Aramean given up for lost.”
Before Jacob left, Isaac gave another blessing, this one clearly linked to earlier traditions in Genesis by the words “fertile and numerous” (28:3), alluding to Gen 1:28 and 9:1: Like Adam and Noah, Jacob is to be the start of something new and big, becoming “an assembly of peoples.” Isaac went on (28:4) to link Jacob with the Abrahamic promise and possession of the land, something new in the narrative and especially incongruous in view of his imminent departure. Unlikely as it seems, Jacob has been marked as the bearer of the promise.
At this point, Esau does not look as bad as later tradition painted him (especially Heb 12:16, which called him “irreligious”), since he has been victimized in both stories of rivalry with Jacob. His rehabilitation is further suggested by the 2 snippets of information about his wives which frame the deception story (26:34–35 and 28:6–9). The first reports that his Hittite wives “were a source of bitterness” to his parents; the second notes that he married Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, Isaac’s half-brother. Moreover, Esau remains in Canaan, and the promise concerns the land (28:4).
This, then, is the situation: Jacob has spurned the Abrahamic promise and has decamped the land which the promise conveyed to Abraham’s offspring; Esau has received a patriarchal promise only slightly less complete than Jacob’s, and has married within the Abrahamic family in order to please his parents; he is on the land. The narrative retains Esau more as a peer than as a subordinate, and everything points toward his regaining his lost privileged position. Naturally, the informed reader knows that this did not happen, but the story’s willingness to let this prospect arise heightens the tension which Jacob’s moral deficiencies and his flight have already raised.
Segment E (28:10–22). In a brief but pivotal episode—the only event from his journey to the north—Jacob dreamed of a stairway between earth and heaven, with God’s agents going up and down on it. The Lord stood beside him and promised him the land, innumerable offspring, and the divine presence to protect and return him to the land (vv 13–15). Jacob awoke, recognizing the numinous character of both the place and his experience, and responded by setting up a stone pillar and naming the site Bethel, “God’s House” (vv 16–19). He reciprocated the promise by a conditional vow, “the Lord shall be my God” (v 21).
The stairway (traditionally “ladder”; the word does not occur elsewhere in the Bible) is a symbol of the accessibility of God’s help and presence, a theme distinctive to the Jacob stories. It is not a means for human ascent; God’s agents go up and come down. The stairway is like a fireman’s pole: when people are in need, helpers come down to render it. Their place is not in heaven, but on earth, where the divine presence is required.
In Jacob’s life, this event is epochal because (a) it is the first time that the divine promise which had come to both Abraham and Isaac now comes to Jacob, directly from God (earlier only from Isaac in Gen 28:3–4), and because (b) it is the first time that Jacob shows any interest whatsoever in the religious side of his family tradition (previously only focusing on priority over Esau). The divine initiative arrested him as he was in flight from his land and his people, and Jacob was sufficiently moved to acknowledge God’s presence and to perform religious acts.
The sections 28:6–9 and 10–22 interrupt what would otherwise be a summary account of Jacob’s trip to Haran (28:5 plus 29:1; 28:10 duplicates 28:5), suggesting that each element had an earlier and different context. The genealogical interests of vv 6–9 have led many scholars to associate it with P, and the use of “Elohim” in segment E´ connects it with E. The Bethel story certainly functions as an etiology of a sacred place and location of a sanctuary where the faithful later came to worship and pay tithes (v 22). But its incorporation into the Jacob cycle has enlarged its function and meaning. Particularly the use of “YHWH” (vv 13, 16, 21) shows the story’s links with Israel’s distinctive religion, and gives to Jacob’s words in v 21 a confessional character which marks the event as a kind of conversion, occurring just as he seems firmly to have closed the door on becoming what later generations knew he became: the ancestor of Israel, God’s people.
At the same time, Jacob’s vow falls short of hearty embrace of the promise. Its conditionality (“If …” v 20) is confirmed by its content. In reiterating it (vv 20–21a), Jacob omits all references to the land, progeny, expansion, and the families of the earth—essential to the patriarchal promise (vv 12–14); he is preoccupied with personal well-being (he adds food and clothes), and he alters (v 21) the promise of v 15 in subtle ways (e.g., “I [the Lord] will bring you back” becomes “if I [Jacob] return,” and “this land” becomes “my father’s house”), all of which shows that Jacob wishes to retain the initiative and is more interested in the family estate than the land. In short, although the Bethel event marks Jacob’s awakening to God and to the promise, he is still a “smooth man,” and his vows appear to be as much a bargain as a commitment.
Segment F (29:1–30). Jacob’s 20-year residence in Haran (31:38, 41) is recounted in the stories of Segments F–G and G´–F´. He married, serving his mother’s brother 14 years as a bride price; 11 sons and a daughter were born to him by 4 women; and he eventually became wealthy in livestock and servants. His relationships with Laban (in whom Jacob almost met his match in craftiness) dominate these sections. The initial encounter was apparently cordial (vv 13–14), and the final scene is of a covenant meal between them (31:51–54), but in between the 2 men circle warily, each looking to his own advantage.
Jacob’s first contact with his mother’s people was at a well where shepherds were gathered with their flocks. As they spoke, Laban’s daughter Rachel arrived with his flock. The well (v 2) introduces a double entendre (Prov 5:15; Cant 4:15): The large stone on the mouth of the well intimates that Rachel will be hard to get; when Jacob, singlehanded, rolls the stone from the mouth, we have not only a show of masculine strength, but also an intimation that Jacob will marry her. There is no other example in the Bible of a man kissing a woman (v 11).
Jacob stayed with Laban, and after a month proposed to work 7 years in order to marry Rachel. Laban agreed, but when the time was up he substituted his older and less-attractive daughter Leah, a deception Jacob did not discover until the next morning. When Jacob protested, Laban pled local custom, and offered to give him Rachel at the same time, in exchange for another 7 years of work. Thus Jacob came to have 2 wives, each of whom had a maid.
There is an ironic fitness in Laban’s deception. Jacob’s reach for the rights of the firstborn son (Esau, Heb bĕkōr27:32) got him the firstborn daughter (Heb bĕkı̂râ 29:26), as well. He, eschewing the place of the younger son (sāʿı̂r25:23) was at first denied the younger daughter (śeʿı̂râ 29:26). The man who imposed this sentence was the brother of the woman who led Jacob to deceive Isaac. Jacob’s befuddlement is so complete that he did not discover the substitution even in intercourse.
Jacob and Rachel initially have a romantic and tender relationship. She was shapely and beautiful (v 17), and Jacob’s first 7 years’ work seemed like only a few days because of his love for her (v 20). To fall in love is to become vulnerable, and in this relationship the loner began to emerge from his private world of wit and manipulation. As the stairway dream signalled a new direction in Jacob’s relation to God and the promise, so does his love for Rachel in his relationships with other people.
His relationship with Laban was more complex. The uncle embraced and kissed the nephew (v 13), as Jacob and Esau were to do later (33:4), and regarded Jacob as an insider who might suitably marry his daughter (v 19). But Laban’s exclamation, “You are truly my bone and my flesh” (v 14) has as much to do with Jacob’s duplicity as it does with blood, since Laban said this after Jacob had told him all that had happened (v 13), presumably including the reason for his flight from home. The young Laban had been remarked for his cupidity (Gen 24:22, 30–31); the fact that Jacob brought no rich gifts with him did not save him from the mature Laban’s canny eye. Fourteen years’ work would buy many gold bracelets.
Segment G (29:31–30:24). The narrative next turns to the building up of Jacob’s family through the birth of 12 children (including his daughter Dinah). The names of the 11 sons have popular etymologies attached to them which, for the most part, have to do with the wives’ standing with one another or with Jacob. The sense of rivalry and even hostility is very strong (Levi 29:34, Naphtali 30:8, Joseph 30:23), reflecting the reality of a polygamous household and perhaps also of tribal rivalries in later years. None of the names is distinctly theophoric, but God/the Lord is mentioned in most of the explanations.
The Lord favored Leah because she was unloved, and consequently she bore 4 sons. Rachel became envious and burst out at Jacob, “Give me children, or I shall die,” a peremptory demand which recalls Rebekah’s brusque rhetoric (25:22; 27:46). Jacob’s response (v 2) was in kind, and Rachel then offered him her maid Bilhah, using identical words to Sarai’s (Gen 16:2), “that I also may acquire a family through her” (v 3). The story thus compares her not only with Leah but tacitly with her husband’s grandmother, Israel’s primal progenitress, as well. Two sons were born to Jacob through Bilhah, and 2 more through Leah’s maid Zilpah. Rachel sought fecundity with an aphrodisiac (v 14), the only result of which was that Jacob returned to Leah, who bore him 2 more sons (vv 15–20).
Rachel thus remained childless, although Jacob had 10 sons by the other 3 women of the household. The birth of her son Joseph marks the midpoint of the Jacob cycle, and came about because “God remembered Rachel” (v 22). The expression is rich in associations (Noah, at the height of the flood [Gen 8:1], or the subsequent birth of the prophet Samuel in answer to Hannah’s prayer [1 Sam 1:19]), and implies God’s redemptive attention to people’s needs, especially in connection with the covenant (Exod 2:24). With 12 children, Jacob has grown into a complete family. (Dinah is the 12th; the 12th son, Benjamin, was born later on Canaanite soil [35:16–19] although the concluding summary of the cycle lists him as one of the 12 sons born in Paddan-Aram [35:22b–26]). Jacob can now return home.
Segment G´ (30:25–43). But before Jacob was actually to go back, his growth as a family must be matched by his wealth. This and the preceding section—the 2 innermost sections of the cycle—match each other well: The competitiveness and trickery (30:15) of the wives is matched by Laban’s new tricks; the growth of both groups does not come without difficulty, but in the end is ample. Since the Israelite people were later often known as a “flock” under God’s care (e.g., Ezekiel 34; Pss 77:21; 78:20–22; 79:13; 96:6–7; 100:3), the collocation is especially apt; figurally the 2 groups are the same.
Jacob asked Laban’s permission to go back to his homeland: The required time had been more than served (v 26). But when Laban urged him to stay in his service and to name his wages, Jacob proposed to take all the irregularly colored animals out of Laban’s flocks as a nuclear flock of his own. The wily uncle agreed, but at once culled and moved those animals, so that Jacob still had nothing. Jacob responded with certain obscure procedures by which Laban’s good flocks bred miscolored offspring; these then became Jacob’s, in accordance with the agreement. In the end, his large family was equalled by his enormous holdings of servants and livestock (v 43).
Segment F´ (31:1–32:1—Eng 31:1–55). Jacob once more decided to return home. Although his mother had told him that she would send for him, the story is silent about her. There were 3 reasons for his decision: hostility from Laban’s sons (v 1), a change in Laban’s attitude toward him (v 2), and instructions from the Lord to do so (v 3). The synergism of human motives and divine direction is striking. He discussed it secretly (v 4) with Rachel and Leah, referring to Laban’s guile, crediting God with his wealth, and reporting a dream in which “God’s agent” had directed him to return home (vv 7–13). The wives supported Jacob’s decision, describing themselves as “outsiders” in their own clan, since Laban had “sold us and used up our purchase price” (v 15).
It was not only Jacob who credited God with his wealth; the angel said the same thing (v 12), and the wives also, adding that the wealth was justly theirs (v 16). The story thus responds to the brothers’ charge that Jacob had grown rich at Laban’s expense.
Both here and in his earlier wish to return, Jacob spoke of his “land” (30:25; 31:3, 13), as does the summary of his departure (v 18). This language goes beyond that of his previous vow, which spoke only of returning to his “father’s house” (28:21); Jacob will now do more than possess the estate; he will occupy the land. (Laban speaks only of “your father’s house” [v 30], since he knows nothing of the promise.) Moreover, although Jacob was Rebekah’s favorite, he left “to go to his father Isaac” (v 18). Where is Rebekah?
This time Jacob did not ask permission, but left while Laban was away shearing sheep. Unknown to Jacob, Rachel stole the household idols (v 19), perhaps for their religious and financial value. When Laban learned what had happened, he pursued, overtaking them near Canaan. Warned by God not to mistreat them, Laban nevertheless berated Jacob and accused him of stealing the household idols. Swearing death to anyone having the idols, Jacob invited Laban to find them. He searched all the tents, finally coming to Rachel’s. She had hidden them, and, by a ruse, prevented Laban from finding them.
It was Jacob’s turn to berate Laban, and he did so, more harshly than Laban deserved under the immediate circumstances, but not more so, considering the past 20 years. In a speech (vv 38–42) summarizing their relations during that time, Jacob accused his shifty uncle and cited his own conscientious service and God’s protection. In exile, the “slippery man” of Canaan was learning to be a “blameless man.”
Laban proposed a treaty (Heb bĕrı̂t, “covenant”), marking the boundary between them by a heap of stones; each swore by his own deity (v 53), and sealed the agreement with a sacrifice and a meal. Within the story, it is the first meal that Jacob has ever eaten with anyone, and a distinct contrast to the 2 meals which he had arranged and used to get the better of Esau. The narrative thus does not allow Jacob to leave Haran without a reconciliation with Laban—unsought by Jacob—which put an end to 2 decades of mistrust.
Segment E´ (32:2–3—Eng 32:1–2). Parting amicably from Laban, Jacob continued his journey to face a similar encounter with Esau in which he has no blamelessness to plead. In a matching spiritual event to the stairway dream, God’s agents encountered him. Jacob said, “This is God’s camp,” and named that site Mahanaim, “Doublecamp.” The name is or resembles a Hebrew noun (dual number), a form used for objects which occur naturally in pairs, such as hands and ears. His own entourage is one camp (cf. 32:8—Eng 32:7), and God’s agents form the other—a natural pair. He can go on to meet Esau in tandem with the same divine company that he met at Bethel and that have been with him ever since (see 31:11).
Segment D´ (32:4–33—Eng 32:3–32). The cycle returns to Esau, who has not appeared since the end of segment D, and who is now mentioned together with the two geographical names to which the cycle early made allusion (segment A). Expecting Esau to attack, Jacob broke his retinue into 2 camps so that at least half might escape. (He is now a “people” [v 7], a term never applied to Abraham or Isaac.)
He then prayed for help, another first (vv 9–12). First, his address to God reaches back in time by speaking of the “God of Abraham and Isaac,” and forward by using “Yahweh,” the distinctive name of Israel’s deity. Second, as grounds he quotes the divine directive (from 31:3) pursuing which he had come to the present hazardous moment, substituting “deal bountifully with” for “be with.” His return to the promise at the end of the prayer uses words (“offspring as the sands of the sea”) which have not appeared in the cycle applied to Jacob (28:14 spoke of the “dust of the earth”); the narrative telescopes the promises here, drawing this line from Gen 22:17—the promise to Abraham—and identifying Jacob with the promise in its historical depth. Third, he acknowledges God’s gifts. He had left Canaan in naked flight, and was now two camps. His words “I am unworthy” (v 10), literally, “I am too small” (Heb qāṭōntı̂), express more than unworthiness; they also allude to Jacob’s being the younger (qāṭōn29:15, 24) and to the reversal of primogeniture (Brueggemann 1982). Fourth, the petition beseeches rescue from Esau, specifically mentioning the mothers and children; the language is that of the biblical psalms (e.g., 31:16; 59:2–3; 142:7; 143:9). The absence of any acknowledgement of wrongdoing is noteworthy.
“A man wrestled with him until dawn” (v 24). This best-known of the Jacob stories remains mysterious. In their southward march they had reached the river Jabbok and were camped on its N bank. During the night after Jacob had dispatched the gifts to Esau, he got up and took his family over to the S bank; he did the same with his possessions—no motive for this is given. Jacob remained alone in the camp. There is no “angel” in this story (an interpretation found in Hos 12:4), and the introduction of an adversary is abrupt and unexpected. Is it Esau, taking revenge in kind by a sneak attack in the dark? The match was even, but the adversary managed to wrench Jacob’s hip at its socket before asking for release as the dawn broke. Jacob refused, “unless you bless me.” The adversary required him to say his name—“Jacob”—and then changed it to “Israel,” giving a popular etymology by which it means “he strives with God.” When Jacob asked his adversary’s name, he was told, “You must not ask my name,” and they parted (see Gen 35:9–15). Jacob named the place “God’s Face,” and went his way, limping, as the sun rose. A dietary etiology concludes the story.
In its present form and position, the story concerns struggle with people and with God (see also Kodell 1980). The unnamed “man” symbolizes every person with whom Jacob struggled—Esau, Isaac, Laban—and yet, the “man” at the beginning of the story is certainly God at the end, for who else is it whose name cannot be spoken? When else did Jacob strive with God? The story, therefore, in an overt polyvalence, blends Jacob’s conflict with people and with God into one event. The larger narrative also suggests this identification. First, Jacob prayed, “Rescue me (Heb haṣṣı̂lēnı̂) from my brother” (v 11), then he named the wrestling-site “God’s Face,” saying, “My life has been rescued” (Heb wattinnāṣēl, v 30). Second, after wrestling, he said, “I have seen God face to face” (v 30), and when he met Esau, he said, “To see your face is like seeing God’s face” (33:10).
To utter his name was to speak his character—“cheat”—making good the lack of any confession in the prayer, and acknowledging that his alienation from Esau was not an episode but a way of life. The story is thus made psychologically and theologically profound by superimposing on one another Jacob’s need to face his own character, his relations with people, and his relation with God.
The limp suggests the costliness of the lonely struggle. It also shows Jacob advancing to meet Esau in a painful vulnerability; whatever he might have thought previously of victory in struggle or of escape (v 8) is now quite impossible. He limps. But the sun is rising, and he is on his way to becoming a new man, a process begun as the sun was setting (28:11).
Segment C´ (33:1–20). The story moves immediately to the encounter between the 2 brothers. Jacob now leads his entourage, having previously followed it from behind. His elaborate obeisance before Esau (v 3) is without parallel in the Bible. But Esau does not want a fight: they embrace, kiss, and weep.
In the next segment (B´) the text plays on two Hebrew words similar in appearance and sound: maḥăneh“company” (32:3, 8–9, 11, 22 [—Eng 32:2, 7–8, 10, 21]), and minḥâ “gift” (32:14, 19, 21–22 [—Eng 13, 18, 20–21]; cf. bĕrākâ and bĕkōrâ in segments A and C). Now in 33:8, 10, the maḥăneh has become the minḥâ; Jacob urges Esau to accept the company/gift as a sign of the acceptance of his person. Then comes the jolt (Fishbane 1975), “Please take,” Jacob urged, “my blessing (bĕrākâ)” (v 11). Dropping minḥâ, he utilizes the same noun and verb used by Esau and Isaac when Jacob took the blessing which was not his (27:35–36). The pairing of minḥâ with maḥăneh throughout these 2 sections makes the use of bĕrākâ particularly obtrusive, and the reference to segment C is very clear.
Yet, this is as far as the narrative can go in describing the reconciliation, for Jacob did not actually return the right of primogeniture, and historically Israel never conceded Edom’s priority. Dramatically and symbolically, Jacob’s acceptance by Esau could have been marked by a meal; its absence suggests that the reconciliation fell short of the solidity which Israel felt with the Syrian homeland of Rebekah and Rachel, and the narrative expresses this overtly by Jacob’s wariness of Esau’s two offers of company and assistance (vv 12–16).
They went their separate ways, Esau to Seir and Jacob to Canaan. His first act there was to buy land and set up an altar; by naming it “El, the God of Israel,” he identified himself with the land and with the God who wrestled with him and gave him the name which became that of the people of God. Apart from the etiology of 32:33 it is the cycle’s first use of the name “Israel” since it was given.
Segment B´ (34:1–31). Jacob’s family settled on land that Jacob bought near Shechem. Dinah, his daughter by Leah, was raped by Shechem (his name is the same as the city’s), son of the city’s chief, Hamor. Jacob’s involvement in the episode which followed is minimal, being restricted to the notice that he was silent about the rape until his sons came in from the field (v 5), and to his protest against his sons’ subsequent actions (v 30).
Shechem wished to marry Dinah. His father’s negotiations were entirely with Jacob’s sons; Hamor even referred to their sister as “your [plural] daughter” (v 8). He proposed intermarriage between the family of Jacob and the Shechemites, to include full and free rights in the land. The brothers agreed, provided the Shechemite men accepted circumcision (already a mark of the Abrahamic tradition, Genesis 17). Then the newcomers would mingle and become “one people” with them (vv 16, 22). The Shechemites agreed. But on the third day, Dinah’s uterine brothers Simeon and Levi attacked the city by surprise, killing all its men, including Hamor and Shechem, and taking Dinah away. The other brothers followed and pillaged the town, taking the women and children and all its wealth. The story closes with Jacob’s effete protest that Simeon and Levi have made him “odious” in the land; he fears an attack which his small forces could not resist. The sons say only, “Should he treat our sister like a whore?”
The violence and duplicity of this story surpass anything ever done by Jacob, Rebekah, or Laban. Jacob’s protest—feeble and motivated by fear of revenge rather than by moral outrage—and his silence at the outset raise the question whether we have here the new or the old Jacob; indeed, the new name is not used at all in the story (except in the anachronistic national sense in v 7).
To be sure, the threat was great and the accommodation proposed by Hamor (“one people,” vv 16, 22) went far beyond the treaty designed by Abimelech (Gen 26:29 [segment B]); to “intermarry” (hitḥattēn) was forbidden (Deut 7:2–3; Josh 23:12; Ezra 9:14); and the Shechemites were clearly seeking their own advantage at Jacob’s expense: “Their cattle and substance and all their beasts will be ours.” The story is a justly sharp warning against sexual irregularity and against assimilation. But the circumcision proposal was a ruse from the beginning; the brokers spoke “with guile” (Heb bĕmirmâ, v 13) and never intended intermarriage.
The cycle, therefore, presents 2 paradigms for relationships with the residents of the land: First, a sacrificial self-giving which leads to “space” and to mutual acceptance and respect; second, a murderous and vindictive exclusivism. In segment B (Gen 26:1–33), Isaac’s way resulted in God’s blessing and agricultural prosperity: He found water. There is but one word of evaluation in B´: “guile” (mirmâ). But, given the larger Israelite religious context, that is quite enough. It is the same word already used of Jacob’s deceit of Isaac (27:35), and otherwise occurs 37 times, always negatively, exclusively in the Prophets and Wisdom literature (except 2 Kgs 9:23). Jer 9:5 (—Eng 9:6) uses mirmâtwice, and also alludes to Jacob by using the verb ʿāqab (also twice, in 9:3—Eng 9:4). The word mirmâ is almost a code word for social evil, and particular condemnation falls on guileful speech (Ps 52:6; Dan 8:25; 11:23). Note its use in Hos 12:1, 8, enclosing a passage which refers to Jacob.
Thus Jacob found that it was not easy to shed a whole way of life; more was yet needed before the promise (segment A) can be realized.
This chapter has long been a textbook example for source critics, who see in some of its internal confusions evidence that 2 versions have been combined—one from J (Hamor speaks) and one from P (Shechem speaks).
Segment A´ (35:1–29). The last chapter of a cycle of stories should be highly important, especially in an “anatomy,” where the ideas are as important as the stories. Chap. 35 has generally puzzled scholars because it comprises discrete and diverse fragments, a feature which may find a parallel in early Arabic biographies (Delitzsch), and because parts of it duplicate earlier material (Jacob becomes Israel, he names Bethel). But everything here plays a role, either in bringing some of the cycle’s themes to a conclusion or in echoing something in segment A. There are 7 fragments to consider.
1. Vv 1–7. Responding to God’s direction, Jacob led a pilgrimage to Bethel, preceded by religious reforms involving his own household and (in the context of chap. 34) the Shechemite captives. The language of Jacob’s appeal to the people, especially “Rid yourselves of the alien gods in your midst” (v 2), makes him the prototype of later reformers who called on God’s people to repent: Joshua (Josh 24:23) and Samuel (1 Sam 7:3). Who are you, Jacob? The sly loner of segment A has become the zealous religious leader of a people (vv 2, 6).
2. Vv 9–15. God appeared, not only to bless Jacob, but also to change his name to “Israel,” and to reiterate the twofold promise of progeny and land previously given to Abraham and Isaac. The cycle knows 2 traditions of Jacob’s name-change, one associated with the wrestling in Transjordan (segment D´) and one here with Bethel in Canaan. The former is a personal episode in which Jacob struggled to lay aside his fractious and estranging way of life; the latter follows his engagement in the religious life of his people, showing that the story of Jacob as person was also read and told of Jacob as national progenitor. Accordingly, the Heb wayĕbārek ʾōtô (v 9) should be translated “he blessed him” but at 32:30 “he took leave of him” (so JPSV), since the blessing and promise come only after Jacob shows this collective concern. The story can now call him “Israel” (v 21), which it has not done previously.
The promise uses the words “be fertile and increase,” which Isaac had also used (28:3, see segment D). The hint there of Jacob as the first man—who, like Adam and Noah, initiates something new and big and who can justly inherit the promise of the land—can now be seen enfleshed in the chastened and returned Jacob. Now the new beginning can occur, because Jacob cares about his people.
The cycle also knows two traditions of the naming of Bethel, one on Jacob’s flight (segment E), and one here upon his return. The pair of duplicate name-givings in A´, therefore, link it specifically with the 2 previous epochal religious experiences of Jacob’s life: when God arrested his attention and obtained a preliminary if wary response (28:10–22), and when God brought Jacob to face himself and his wider relationships with both people and the divine (32:22–32). It forms itself a third, in which Jacob’s development comes to the necessary stage of religious leadership in a distinctly Israelite context. The placement of vv 9–15 at the close of the cycle is necessary in view of the process through which Jacob passed, but it also nicely balances segment A’s giving of the name “Jacob” with the giving of the new name “Israel.”
3. V 8. Verses 1–15 form a unity enclosed by references to Bethel at beginning and end. Verse 8 is geographically appropriate, but intrusive in every other way. It may be understood in connection with segment A’s hint that Rebekah’s role in the cycle will be incomplete. When A´ reports 3 deaths—two of them expected through the passage of time—the absence of any word about Rebekah becomes noticeable. What has happened to her?
Rebekah’s unfinished question (25:22) finds its complement here in 35:8, which is not so much the notice of Deborah’s death as a non-notice of Rebekah’s. As far as the cycle goes, Rebekah’s life is an unfinished story. After her complaint, “What good will life be to me?” (27:46) we never hear of her again. She had told Jacob, “When your brother’s anger subsides, I will bring you back from Haran” (27:44–45), but Jacob’s return has its own motives (31:1–3). Rebekah disappears from the story without a trace. The necrology of v 8 is positioned anomalously between 2 paragraphs showing the new Jacob at his best: He leads a religious reform, and he receives a new name and the divine promise. Its obtrusive position is hermeneutic: The Aramean way of life is gone; Israel—both person and people—will put away alien gods and will occupy the land of promise.
4. Vv 16–21. As they travelled from Bethel, Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin. Jacob’s sons now number 12, and the death of the beloved wife signals that the cycle is drawing to a close. But it closes on a note of hope: Rachel’s name for the infant—Ben-oni “Son of my suffering”—looks backward, to her untimely death and to the rivalries and disappointments of the years in Haran; but Jacob’s alternate name “Son of the right hand,” looks forward by suggesting his own favor and by evoking the right hand of God which saves (Isa 41:10; Pss 20:7; 118:15–16).
5. V 22a. The brusque notice that Reuben slept with Bilhah, who is called Israel’s concubine rather than Rachel’s maid, also suggests the passing of the old order. Reuben was Jacob’s firstborn; to sleep with a man’s women is to lay claim to his position.
6. Vv 22b–26. Segment A had said that 2 peoples would issue from Rebekah. The list of the 12 sons, grouped by mother, matches this prediction, in that one of these peoples (the 12 tribes of Israel) sprang from one of Rebekah’s sons.
7. Vv 27–29. Finally Jacob reaches his father Isaac, at the ancestral residence of Abraham and Isaac (Gen 13:18; 23:2; 25:9). There Isaac died, and the story which began with prenatal jostling closes with the brothers Jacob and Esau joined in burying the father who prayed for their birth.
The divine plan for Jacob has been achieved, against human custom (primogeniture) and against human suitability (Jacob is the one who seeks his own advantage at others’ expense, in flight from intimacy). Yet it has come about without any divine overriding of Jacob’s “free will”; all human actions have adequate human motivation, including the pivotal decision to return to Canaan. In and through these actions, the sovereign will guides human thought and choice in a gracious interplay both reasonable and mysterious.
C. Meaning
The cycle’s internal indications that “Jacob” is a collective reference for Israel find their parallel in the Bible’s frequent use of “Jacob,” either alone or in parallelism with “Israel,” to denote the nation and/or the religious community (e.g., Deut 32:9; Jer 10:25; 30:7; Isa 10:21; 17:4; Ps 44:5; see BDB, 785). Note Isa 29:22–23, which expressly equates “Jacob” with “his children”: “For when he [Jacob]—that is, his children—behold what my hands have wrought in their midst, they will hallow My name.” The same equivalence is frequent in Second Isaiah where the Lord (a) addresses “Jacob/Israel” directly (40:27; 41:8, 14; 43:1, 22; 44:1, 2, 21, 23; 44:4; 48:12, 21; 49:5), (b) speaks of having given “Jacob” over to disaster (42:4; 43:28), and (c) speaks hopefully of “Jacob’s” return to the Lord (49:5–6; 59:20). Some of these refer to the “servant,” a figure whose identity is ambiguous, but others refer unmistakably to the prophet’s audience and readers. The presumed exilic setting of Second Isaiah suggests a particular linking of the narrative’s out-and-back axis with the experience of exile and (hope for) return; the exilic or early postexilic period would be a time in which this particular figural reading of the Jacob stories might have developed (Cross has noted similarities between P and Second Isaiah, CMHE, 322–23). One could also compare Second Isaiah’s assertion of the Lord’s presence with the people (Isa 41:10; 43:2, 5) with God’s promise to be with Jacob and not leave him, a motif that is distinctive to the Jacob stories and is especially enshrined in the two theophanic passages about the Lord’s agents (explicitly in Gen 28:10–22; implicitly in 32:2–3—Eng 32:1–2).
The tradents and users understood themselves as “Israel,” automatically giving the stories a referred meaning in which they are also about the people of the covenant, whose existence and survival were often against both convention and suitability. The narratives are “typical and representational rather than realistic” (Blenkinsopp 1981: 41). When prominence is given to political relationships, especially under the influence of the documentary hypothesis, the cycle has to do with Israel’s hegemony over her enemies and her occupation of the land (de Pury 1975; CMHE, 263–64), both in the time of Solomon (the Yahwist) and later after the Exile (P, see McKenzie 1980: 230–31). But in the present biblical context, religious interests come to the fore. Jacob’s vocation is to be an ʾı̂š tām, a “moral person” (Gen 25:27). Note how many of the Isaiah passages stress repentence, redemption, and obedience to Torah (14:1; 27:9; 29:22–24; 41:14; 43:1, 22–28; 44:21–22; 48:21; 49:5–6; 59:20). The question of Israel’s origins is a question of “the essence and meaning of a people. It is ideological rather than historiographical”; the existence of Israel as a people does not depend on a physical or political context but on their observance of the Lord’s commands and statutes (Thompson 1987: 40, 194). Jacob’s return to the land means not just Israel’s return to the land from exile (McKay 1987) but also Israel’s return to God. The cycle was paradigmatic for their own character and vocation, and in turn for the people of God in every time and place.
There are other inner-biblical indicators of the Jacob cycle’s religious use. In Hosea 12, “Jacob” denotes what was left of the N kingdom and is the object of the prophet’s preaching; note especially the “Jacob”/“us” equivalence (“[Jacob] would find Him at Bethel, and there He speaks with us,” Hos 12:5—Eng 12:4) and the return (Heb šûb) motif in Hos 12:7—Eng 12:6. In Isa 49:5–6, the statement that the Lord “will bring back (Heb šôbēb) Jacob to Himself” suggests a figural reading of Jacob’s return; furthermore, Israel as a “light to the nations” expresses the idea of service and mission intimated in Gen 30:30 (one of Jacob’s 4 anomalous uses of YHWH). Brodie (1981) argues that the Jabbok story has been constructed to reflect the oracle in Jer 30:1–13; the cycle has been shaped by a sermon. Jer 9:3 warns against trusting even a brother, “for every brother takes advantage” (Heb ʿāqôb yaʿqōb [the form differs from the name “Jacob” only by a single šĕwa]), and v 5 adds, “You dwell in the midst of deceit (mirmâ), in their deceit they refuse to heed me, declares the Lord” (v 5); in v 3’s resonance with “Jacob” and v 5’s use of mirmâ we see a figural application of the Jacob material to Israel’s moral life.
The cycle, therefore, is not historical; it is homiletic, and bears the marks of shaping to that end. The individual “Jacob” and the collective “Israel” overlap—even coalesce—at the artistically most significant points in the cycle: the beginning, the ending, and the middle. At the beginning, this overlap is accomplished by identifying the twins with nations (Gen 25:23) and by allusions associated with Esau’s name; at the ending, by Jacob’s receiving the name “Israel” (35:10) and by his engagement in the religious life of his people (vv 1–7); and at the middle by the collocation of the sections on children and flocks (Gen 29:31–30:43). It is a cycle about the people of God.
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