Genesis: 1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2c 2d 3 4a 4b 4c/5 6a 6b 7 8 9 10 11a 11b 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25a 25b 26a 26b 27 28a 28b 29 30a 30b 31a 31b/32a 32b 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44a 44b 45 46 47a 47b 48 49 50
SEDRA TOLDOT
The Sedra divides into 3 sections:
a) 25:19-34 = The birth of Ya'akov and Esav. The sale of the birthright.
b) 26:1-35 = Yitschak in Mitsrayim (Egypt); another version of the Avi-Melech tale with Av-Raham in Genesis 20.
c) 27:1-28:9 = The blessings of Ya'akov and Esav.
THE LEGEND OF THE SALE OF ESAV'S BIRTHRIGHT: some introductory thoughts and notes:
c) 27:1-28:9 = The blessings of Ya'akov and Esav.
THE LEGEND OF THE SALE OF ESAV'S BIRTHRIGHT: some introductory thoughts and notes:
Once again we are at the beginning of a new scroll, or a new book; hence the recapitulation of history at the outset.
It transpires (we had already noted it) that Nachor has twelve children too, 8 by Milkah (Uts, Buz, Kemu-El, Kesed, Chazo, Pildash, Yidlaph, Betu-El); 4 by his concubine Re'umah (Tabah, Gacham, Tahash and Ma'achah). NB Kemu-El bore Aram, and Betu-El bore Lavan and Rivkah (Rebecca). Once again the map of the heavens is reflected in the map of the tribe, with the parents standing as sun and moon, sun-god and moon-goddess, priest and priestess of the sun-god and moon-goddess, the twelve sons (and usually one daughter) standing for the twelve constellations.
Yitschak's marriage relates to matrilocal laws; why, after all, did he not marry one of Lot's daughters if staying in the tribe was the issue? Or had incest defiled them? Or was the separation of Lot and Av-Ram, as discussed in my notes there, also a separation of tribes - because Lot is also not counted as his heir, despite the custom of the time being nephew-succession if there was no son. Ya'akov's marriages to Le'ah and Rachel not only repeat the endogamy but in many respects mirror Eli-Ezer's story in Genesis 24.
Rivkah was barren for 20 years, then had twins; like Sarah, the priestess-queen, she has only one birth and it is always a son: so this is really a religious epic performed by actors, rather than a historical account. This helps confirm that Bin-Oni (her name for Bin-Yamin) was not really a son of Rachel at all, but an Egyptian addition. Or was a son of Rachel, but with Rachel not part of the Padan Aram family, but added later. I will discuss this in more detail when Ya'akov arrives in Padan Aram.
Genesis 38:27 has Parets and Zerach, Yehudah's twins by his daughter-in-law Tamar, likewise fighting in the womb,as Esav and Ya'akov will do here. Most likely these womb-battles and twin-births are a leftover from the epoch of Gemini, circa 7000 BCE.
Proteus and Acrisius likewise fought in the womb of Queen Aglaea. As Acrisius claimed descent from Belus (Ba'al), the twin-brother of Agenor (Kena'an), this may hint at the original (see Robert Graves and Raphael Patai p190). The hint is of Lear-like civil war: Edom v Yisra-El.
In the original tales before the Tanach was created, Esav was probably the Hunter-God Usöus of Usu (Tsur/Tyre). His kingdom was Mount Se'ir, which will become Esav's kingdom later in Genesis. SE'IR = "shaggy", in the sense of "covered with trees" rather than hair! But the stories of him pick up the shagginess and make it his physical being. He was red-haired because Edom (אדם) is connected to Adom (אדום) which means "red", and because of the blood-red colour of its soil (ADAMAH - אדמה).
At the time of writing this down (mid 5th century BCE), the Edomites, in the wake of Nebuchadnezzar II's capture of Yeru-Shala'im, had seized part of southern Yehudah, including Chevron. This may well explain several of the conflicts of the Bible stories, and especially the continuous "proofs" that the younger Beney Yisra-Eli brother out of Yitschak, and not the elder Edomite brother out of Yishma-El, has legal tenure - a political conflict not terribly different from the Israeli-Palestinian dispute over the West Bank today (Zionists might like to keep in mind that John Hyrcanus eventually won all the land back and forced the Edomites to convert to proto-Judaism; but that Herod was an Edomite, or in the Roman an Idumean).
Ya'akov was probably Ya'akov-El originally - the heel connecting him with both Achilles (sacred heel) and Oedipus (swollen foot), and all three with the Fisher King. Nice coincidence, Rabbi Akiva gets his name from the same root.
✡
25:19: VE ELEH TOLDOT YITSCHAK BEN AV-RAHAM AV-RAHAM HOLID ET YITSCHAK
וְאֵלֶּה תּוֹלְדֹת יִצְחָק בֶּן אַבְרָהָם אַבְרָהָם הוֹלִיד אֶת יִצְחָק
KJ (King James translation): And these are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son: Abraham begat Isaac:
BN (BibleNet translation): This is the family tree of Yitschak, Av-Raham's son; Av-Raham fathered Yitschak.
As explained in Genesis 21:6 et al, the name is usually reckoned to be connected to the root TSACHAK (צחק) = "to laugh"; however Psalm 105:9, Jeremiah 33:26 and Amos 7:9 and 7:16 all give YISCHAK (ישחק), whose meaning is very similar, being "to sport, jest, play, scorn, deride"; and also usable for "to dance", in the way that we use "to play" in English for musical instruments. There is a point - Genesis 21:9 - where Yitschak and Yishma-El were said to be "sporting together" which may be a reflection of this variance.
25:20: VA YEHI YITSCHAK BEN ARBA'IM SHANAH BA KACHTO ET RIVKAH BAT BETU-EL HA ARAMI MI PADAN ARAM ACHOT LAVAN HA ARAMI LO LE ISHAH
וַיְהִי יִצְחָק בֶּן אַרְבָּעִים שָׁנָה בְּקַחְתּוֹ אֶת רִבְקָה בַּת בְּתוּאֵל הָאֲרַמִּי מִפַּדַּן אֲרָם אֲחוֹת לָבָן הָאֲרַמִּי לוֹ לְאִשָּׁה
KJ: And Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padanaram, the sister to Laban the Syrian.
BN: Now Yitschak was forty years old when he took Rivkah, the daughter of Betu-El the Aramaean, of Padan Aram, the sister of Lavan the Aramaean, to be his wife.
Note the emphasis on the Aramaean origins; is it wanting us to understand that they were not the same tribe, or even the same people, or that they most definitely were?
But also note Yitschak's age, which is a great deal older than the tale of Eli-Ezer had led us to believe; unless we are once again where the earliest chapters took us, into a numbering system rather different from what we are accustomed to. Rivkah, in the Eli-Ezer tales, cannot have been more than 15.
25:21: VA YE'ETAR YITSCHAK LA YHVH LE NOCHACH ISHTO KI AKARAH HI VA YE'ATER LO YHVH VA TAHAR RIVKAH ISHTO
וַיֶּעְתַּר יִצְחָק לַיהוָה לְנֹכַח אִשְׁתּוֹ כִּי עֲקָרָה הִוא וַיֵּעָתֶר לוֹ יְהוָה וַתַּהַר רִבְקָה אִשְׁתּוֹ
KJ: And Isaac intreated the LORD for his wife, because she was barren: and the LORD was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.
BN: And Yitschak petitioned YHVH on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and YHVH heard his petition, and Rivkah his wife conceived.
VA YE'ETAR: from the root ATAR, which is really about the incense used with the sacrifice and not about the petitioning; only in the Niphal (passive) is the verb generally used as it is translated here, "to allow oneself to be petitioned". To a modern reader it makes more sense simply to say that Yitschak "petitioned YHVH" and that "YHVH heard his petition". However we translate it, we can assume from the presence of incense that an animal sacrifice was part of the process of petitioning, and that this was a fertility rite.
"My heart is in the East
and I deep in the West;
my food has no taste -
how could it be sweet?
How can I fulfil my vows
with Zion in the power of Edom
and I in the fetters of Arabia?
It will be nothing to leave
all the goodness of Spain,
so rich is the dust
of the ruined sanctuary."
25:31: VA YOMER YA'AKOV MICHRAH CHAYOM ET BECHORAT'CHA LI
KJ: And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.
AKARAH (עקרה): the first similarity with Sarah, who was barren until she had Yitschak in her old age. Rachel too will be barren for a long while before having Yoseph and Bin-Yamin- the strange tales of the mandrake roots. Shmu-El's mother Chanah the Levite likewise (1 Samuel 1). Can one deduce that the long years of infertility were because of the role of the priestess: like the Vestal Virgins, the priestess was not allowed to conceive until she was freed from her tribal duties? Or simply a tale of the fertility goddess, a means of praising her
25:22: VA YITROTSATSU HA BANIM BE KIRBAH VA TOMER IM KEN LAMAH ZEH ANOCHI VA TELECH LIDROSH ET YHVH
וַיִּתְרֹצֲצוּ הַבָּנִים בְּקִרְבָּהּ וַתֹּאמֶר אִם כֵּן לָמָּה זֶּה אָנֹכִי וַתֵּלֶךְ לִדְרֹשׁ אֶת יְהוָה
KJ: And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of the LORD.
BN: And the children struggled together in her womb; and she said, "If this is how it has to be, what am I living for?" And she went to inquire of YHVH.
YITROTSATSU (יתרצצו): As noted above, the pre-natal struggle between twins is mirrored in Genesis 38:27/30 with Parets (פרץ) and Zerach (זרח); and in Greek by Proteus and Acrisius in the womb of Queen Aglaea (Graves/Patai p190): as Acrisius claimed descent from Ba'al, the tan-brother of Agenor (Kena'an), and as the legend belonged to the Acheans, who are quite likely the Biblical Chivites (חוי), the connections may not be entirely coincidental. The suggestion may be of the division of Av-Raham's sheikhdom between Yisra-El and Edom through Ya'akov and Esav. For details of the history of Edom see Graves/Patai p 191.
BANIM (בנים): How did she know they were boys? Or is Banim being used here to mean "children?
KIRBAH (קרבה): interesting choice of word; see note to Genesis 18:12
IM KEN (אם כן): Modern Ivrit might say IM KACHA; the sense is of "if it has to be this way".
LIDROSH (לדרש): "To seek guidance", presumably from an oracle (even Hertz agrees with this view so it must be correct!); however according to the Midrash (whose own name comes from this root), she went to the school of Shem, which is really the school of Shem and Ever, where the knowledge of YHVH was taught. How charming!
The Midrash in question is Genesis Rabbah 63:6, but you will want to read the article here, which journeys through all the Midrashim relating to the story of Yitschak and Rivkah, and may surprise those of you who find some of TheBibleNet's interpretations and commentaries "unconventional" - you will see that almost all of them precede Bible criticism by about 2000 years!
IM KEN...YHVH: Rather than the given ltranslation, which is fairly standard, I am going to suggest: "Oh, god, I am in agony; please, please, why do pregnancy and childbirth have to be like this?" To which the Biblical answer can be found in Genesis 3:16.
25:23: VA YOMER YHVH LAH SHNEY GOYIM BE VITNECH U SHNEY LE'UMIM MI ME'AYICH YIPAREDU U LE'OM MI LE'OM YE'EMATS VE RAV YA'AVOD TSA'IR
וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה לָהּ שְׁנֵי גיים בְּבִטְנֵךְ וּשְׁנֵי לְאֻמִּים מִמֵּעַיִךְ יִפָּרֵדוּ וּלְאֹם מִלְאֹם יֶאֱמָץ וְרַב יַעֲבֹד צָעִיר
KJ: And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.
BN: And YHVH said to her, "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be separated from your loins; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger."
Definitely oracular, though it also has the sound of a Greek or Phoenician myth about the gods. It is presented by Hertz in the form of a poem, which suggests an ancient piece of liturgy, for which the rest of the story was presumably provided as a vehicle. Kena'ani fertility liturgy? The division of the land is implicit. But clearly the verse is the oracular answer. Can we draw from this example any evidence of all the other occasions when "YHVH said" in the Tanach?
Note the distinction being made here between GOYIM and LE'UMIM, that the GOY is a "nation" (a country with defined geographical boundaries, a tribal territory, possibly marked by boundary-stones), where the LE'OM is a "people" (who could be living anywhere on Earth, but are connected by blood, history, language, culture...)
Hertz reckons the prophecy of the elder serving the younger was fulfilled when King David defeated the Edomites (2 Samuel 8:14); however, this only works if history then stands still, whereas there are occasions later on when it went the other way around, ascendancy going to the Edomites: see especially the time of Herod.
VITNECH (בטנך): not KIRBAH (קרבה) this time. The Beten is the belly, the Kerev is the "insides", more bowel than uterus; odd that the word for "womb" isn't used, as it is elsewhere in the Tanach - RECHEM (רחם).
25:24: VA YIMLE'U YAMEYHA LALEDET VE HINEH TOMIM BE VITNAH
וַיִּמְלְאוּ יָמֶיהָ לָלֶדֶת וְהִנֵּה תוֹמִם בְּבִטְנָהּ
KJ: And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.
BN: And when the time came for her to give birth, there were indeed twins in her stomach.
BETEN: All translations render this as "womb", because we have had that level of understanding of human anatomy for as long as the Tanach has existed in translation. But the Yehudit word for womb is Rechem (רחם), and the text here says BETEN, which is the stomach.
25:25: VA YETS'E HA RI'SHON ADMONI KULO KE ADERET SE'AR VA YIKRE'U SHEMO ESAV
וַיֵּצֵא הָרִאשׁוֹן אַדְמוֹנִי כֻּלּוֹ כְּאַדֶּרֶת שֵׂעָר וַיִּקְרְאוּ שְׁמוֹ עֵשָׂו
KJ: And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau.
BN: And the first to come out was a redhead, ruddy all over like a woolen cloak; and they named him Esav.
ADMONI (אדמוני): the redness linking him to Adam, Kayin and Yishma-El, all of whom are described as "ruddy" of complexion and/or "reheaded" of hair, all of whom leave the Beney Yisra-El to join the Beney Edom, which is the "red" land, from ADAM = "red" and ADAMAH, "the red earth".
SE'AR (שער): change or leave out the pointing and it becomes SE'IR (שער), which is the town and tribe most connected to Esav, and an obvious aetiological explanation for the name; see note above.
ESAV (עשו): a very similar word has already been encountered, in the Creation story, where Elohim brought forth all manner of green grass and herbs etc - only there it ended with a Vet (ב) not a Vav (ו). With a Vav the root is so obscure as to be untraceable; it is definitely not Yehudit, because the rooting does not comply. If the origin of the name is indeed Usöus of Tsur (Tyre) - for which see my note above - the brother of Samemroumus (who Philo translates into Greek as Hypsouranios), then we need to look back into the pre-Phoenician Hittite, which is logical for these stories set around Chevron and related to Adam; Osous was a hunter-god, and was notoriously "shaggy" or "hairy", as in the meaning of SE'AR/SE'IR.
25:26: VA ACHAREY CHEN YATSA ACHIV VA YADO OCHEZET BA AKEV ESAV VA YIKRA SHEMO YA'AKOV VE YITSCHAK BEN SHISHIM SHANAH BE LEDET OTAM
וְאַחֲרֵי כֵן יָצָא אָחִיו וְיָדוֹ אֹחֶזֶת בַּעֲקֵב עֵשָׂו וַיִּקְרָא שְׁמוֹ יַעֲקֹב וְיִצְחָק בֶּן שִׁשִּׁים שָׁנָה בְּלֶדֶת אֹתָם
KJ: And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob: and Isaac was threescore years old when she bare them.
BN: And after that his brother came out, his hand holding on to Esav's heel; and they named him Ya'akov. And Yitschak was sixty years old when she bore them.
No name without an aetiological explanation, and it doesn't need a commentator to hunt them down, because the Tanach itself generally provides it; and sometimes several in contradiction of each other, like Yitschak and Yischak. This one needs to be discounted as an old wive's tale, because it attaches to the heel to Esav, while the name belongs to Ya'akov.
YA'AKOV (יעקב): AKAV (עקב) = "a hill" or "mound"; whence obliquely it becomes "the heel"; metaphorically the mound on the back of the foot; whence IKAVOT (עקבות) are "tracks", because the heel of a barefooted man or animal leaves imprints; whence LA'AKOV (לעקוב) = "to track"; whence it also has the sense of "to follow closely behind", which yields the conjunctive preposition EKEV (עקב). Following close behind is precisely what Ya'akov is doing here, regardless of whether he is holding on to his brother's heel or not, only the Redactor is somewhat inexpert in etymology, and so has added this deduced or invented reason; or it had already become the traditional explanation by his time; either way, by this roundabout route, comes the meaning given in the Tanach.
In fact he is really YAH AKAV (יה עקב) or YAH EKEV (יה עקב), which reflects the female goddess YAH (יה), presumably specific to some hill or burial mound or other outcrop on which a shrine was consecrated. And the heel does then come into play (forgive the pun), because the "heel-god", so to speak, is a commonplace of the ancient world: Oedipus ("swollen foot" in the Greek), and Achilles, he of the sacred heel dipped in the river Styx, both reflecting the act of immolation in the anointing of the priest-king. Ya'akov will go through a similar ritual at Penu-El later on in this story, though there his "Fisher-King wound" will be in the groin, not in the geisha manner on the heel.
YIKRA (יקרא): whereas with Esav it was YIKRE'U (יקראו). This might not matter, except that the Tanach has several instances where children are given more than one name, or there is a dispute as to which of the parents did the naming. Both Sarah (Genesis 18:12-15) and Av-Raham (Genesis 21:3) name their son Yitschak, but on different occasions, and for slightly different reasons. Ya'akov will name his twelfth son Bin-Yamin (Genesis 35:18), but Rachel, in the same verse, has already named him Ben-Oni. David's child with Bat Sheva will be named Shelomoh (2 Samuel 12:24/25), but also Yedid-Yah - the latter may in fact be the name that he took when he became king, and the former his birth-name, but this is not how the text presents it. In the case of Esav, the distinction between YIKRA and YIKRE'U lies in singularity versus plurality; with YIKRA, it might have been mum, dad or both, with YIKRE'U it is definitely both.
cf Hosea 12:4/5 (12:3/4 in some Christian translations), which makes a very direct connection between the struggle with his brother in the womb, and the catching of the heel then, with the struggle with Elohim (Hoshe'a is quite specific that it is Elohim and not a "man" let alone an "angel") at Penu-El, and the wounding of the hollow of his thigh then.
If Yitschak was now 60, then they had been married 20 years before she had kids, and must herself have been in her 30s, late for those times, if not quite so old as her mother must have been when she had Rivkah - see my notes in the last chapter, and also this link to the various Midrashic commentaries, already offered above.
25:27: VA YIGDELU HA NE'ARIM VA YEHI ESAV ISH YODE'A TSAYID ISH SADEH VA YA'AKOV ISH TAM YOSHEV OHALIM
וַיִּגְדְּלוּ הַנְּעָרִים וַיְהִי עֵשָׂו אִישׁ יֹדֵעַ צַיִד אִישׁ שָׂדֶה וְיַעֲקֹב אִישׁ תָּם יֹשֵׁב אֹהָלִים
KJ: And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents.
BN: And the boys grew, and Esav was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; but Ya'akov was a quiet man, dwelling in tents.
The "cunning hunter" echoes Nimrod, who like Esav is much despised by the Rabbis because hunting involves killing and blood-spilling and cruelty to animals; yet his devotion to Yitschak is also praised. Ya'akov, on the other hand, is lauded despite the many stories which reveal him to have been not a very nice person at all (the stealing of his brother's birthright, then the cheating of his father to obtain his brother's blessing; the stealing of Lavan's sheep, and then the stealing away of Lavan's daughters...)
Cf Kayin and Havel (Cain and Abel), even down to the wording. Kayin and Havel is also an Edom-Yisra-El myth in which the red-headed elder brother is supplanted by the somewhat more sedentary younger brother, though I have a deep suspicion that, in the earliest version of Kayin and Havel, Kayin was also a hunter, and not a farmer, and that in the back of both these stories is the equivalent of the Akeda-Jesus bookends, the ram sacrificed at the beginning of the epoch of Aries, the first-born lamb at its end. So, with the hunter replaced by the shepherd, the transition from the epoch of Taurus to that of Pisces - and the previous epoch of Gemini likewise aetiologised in their being twins. There is far more bull-related imagery than farmer-related imagery throughout the Kayin tale, right down to the early form of the Cross "marked" on his rump.
YOSHEV OHALIM (ישב אהלים): "dwelling in tents". Here the Midrash excels even itself, by interpreting this to mean "schools of religious study" - picking up the connection to the word "yeshivah", which is the Rabbinic nickname for a school, in order to do so. Clearly what is being depicted is the difference between the Bedouin and the sedentary life.
25:28: VA YE'EHAV YITSCHAK ET ESAV KI TSAYID BE PHIV VE RIVKAH OHEVET ET YA'AKOV
25:28: VA YE'EHAV YITSCHAK ET ESAV KI TSAYID BE PHIV VE RIVKAH OHEVET ET YA'AKOV
וַיֶּאֱהַב יִצְחָק אֶת עֵשָׂו כִּי צַיִד בְּפִיו וְרִבְקָה אֹהֶבֶת אֶת יַעֲקֹב
KJ: And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob.
BN: Now Yitschak loved Esav, because he ate his venison; and Rivkah loved Ya'akov.
YE'EHAV...OHEVET (יאהב---אהבת): foreshadowing, as the Tanach so often does, what is going to follow.
TSAYID BE PHIV (ציד בפיו). This needs some work. We know TSAYID from the previous verse, meaning "a hunter", but here there is a deeper resonance. PHIV means "his mouth" and BE is either "at", "in" or "on"; so we are going to struggle to translate literally, word by word, what must have been an idiom at the time. It was the smell of the gravy which appeased the bull-god (REYACH NICHO'ACH as we have already seen - Genesis 8:21 - and shall see repeated in the later books of the Torah), causing his inflated nostrils to contract; but the nose is APH (אף), while the mouth is PEY (פֶּה). In the stealing of the blessing later on, both brothers will bring food (the consequence of a sacrifice) to Yitschak, in order to obtain his blessing, but Esav's will be rejected and Ya'akov's accepted – paralleling the Kayin and Havel story in Genesis 4:3 ff. Ya'akov will bring what we can take to have been TSAYID BE PHIV, whatever precisely that was.
There is a reversal of the Kayin and Havel story here as well - Dad prefers Esav (Kayin), Mum prefers Ya'akov (Havel).
25:29: VA YAZED YA'AKOV NAZID VA YAVO ESAV MIN HA SADEH VE HU AYEPH
וַיָּזֶד יַעֲקֹב נָזִיד וַיָּבֹא עֵשָׂו מִן הַשָּׂדֶה וְהוּא עָיֵף
KJ: And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint:
BN: Now Ya'akov was cooking a meat stew, when Esav came in exhausted from the field.
VA YAZED: the etymology of this is problematic; scholars will tell you that the root is ZED, or ZID, or NAZAD, or YAZAD, but they are all guessing. Other than here, the word only occurs in 2 Kings 4:38-40, where Elisha comes to Gil-Gal and tells his servant to "set on the great pot, and make a stew (NAZID - נָּזִיד) for the sons of the prophets", and in Chagai (Haggai) 2:12, where the most vital question of Kashrut is asked: "'If someone has got some koshered meat caught in the pleat of his garment, and that pleat touches bread, or stew (NAZID - נָּזִיד), or wine, or oil, or any food, shall it be rendered kosher?' And the priests answered and said: 'No.'"
HA NAZID (הַנָּזִיד) is rendered as "pottage" in the English translations of both of those passages, and few of us today know what exactlyit means "to sod pottage". Pottage, which properly should have a French pronunciation and only one "t", is now soup, but was originally stew until they made it with so little meat that all you really got was the gravy and the boiled-down vegetables; and just as a matter of interest, with what do you make potage? Red tomatoes, to judge from the next verse. Or possibly bubbe's best beetroots and a few potatoes, and it's really borscht. Goulash in the European; Tajine may be the nearest Middle Eastern recipe, though that's really Moroccan and North African in general, and is usually cooked in a pot. Possibly kafta, though verse 34 emphasises lentils, so it may have been purely vegetarian, and kefta is definitely meat. I am quite certain that, if the Redactor had been working in Poland in the 17th century CE, instead of the 5th BCE, Ya'akov would have made Esav a bowl of chicken soup. And then we scholars would need to ask: with or without lockshun, with or without kenaidlach?
MIN HA SADEH: There is, of course, a huge problem at the base of all this: Esav as a hunter, and coming in from the field, as though he has been planting cotton or husbanding his tomatoes. We are in the middle of the desert, at either Be'er Sheva or Be'er Lechi Ro'i, or maybe we are three hundred metres below sea level in the salty wasteland of Chevron; they keep sheep and goats and possibly some donkeys in these parts, a few olive trees and some basic home-grown fruit and veg and herbs around the tents; the nearest deer are deep in the Aravah, or at the Dead Sea around Ein Gedi.
AYEPH (עיף): "tired", not "feint"; though, with hunger added, the two become equivalent. And who is going to give up their birthright for a meal, when they can cook their own. Maybe this is the hidden meaning of "to sod pottage" - Esav telling Ya'akov to sod your bloody pottage, I can boil myself some eggs and eat them with matzah, thank you very much. But he doesn't, does he.
25:30: VA YOMER ESAV EL YA'AKOV HA LE'ITENI NA MIN HA ADOM HA ADOM HA ZEH KI AYEPH ANOCHI AL KEN KARA SHEMO EDOM
KJ: And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom.
BN: And Esav said to Ya'akov, "Let me swallow, I beg you, some of this red, red stew, for I am exhausted." And this is why he is also named Edom.
The need to explain names becoming eventually manic! This time, a verse that was clearly added later, out of a second manic need: to make a clear connection between Esau and Edom, and to link it back through Adam to the source – a problematic source of course for the Beney Yisra-El, because if Adam was the progenitor of the Edomites, rather than them, then...the rest hardly needs stating.
HA LE'ITEYNI NA: I have used this translation, more out of spite than science; so many ludicrously bad translations of the Bible exist in the world, one can only go back again and again to Fra Roger Bacon, locked up in the 12th century for daring to suggest that his fellow Christians needed to learn Hebrew and study the Bible in the original, and not in bad Latin translations of inaccurate Greek translations, made by people who likewise did not speak Hebrew. NA is a polite, if rarely used because terribly formal, way of saying "please" - modern Ivrit uses BE VAKASHAH = "on request", which could surely be improved by saying "NA" - though on reflection, "na" sounds like a slurred and lazy "no", so maybe not! What is certain is that Esav asks very nicely, and a better translation would be, "can I get a bowl of that stew you're making, please". Where the niceness is lost, and it foreshadows the Ya'akov we are now going to spend many chapters of not-very-niceness with, is in his brother's cynical and callous response. Who ever heard of a brother selling a bowl of stew in exchange for an entire inheritance? You get home, your brother's cooking the dinner, you grab a spoon or fork, and tuck in.
Why the repetition of HA ADOM HA ADOM (האדם האדם)? It makes Esav sound extremely dense; this suggests that he was known as "the red man" because he referred to the food as "that red stuff"! The later emphasis on Esav as Edom is more illuminating here; though the connection between the grass of Esav (see note to verse 25) and the red earth of Edom is somewhat unclear. Like all of his lineage, starting with Adam, he is associated with the colour red, the colour of Edom: his hair was supposedly red, and now the food for which he sells his birthright is doubly red. The connection is also with Se'ir, and Mount Se'ir especially, as noted in Numbers 24:18, 2 Chronicles 25:11 and 2 Kings 14:7. But Genesis 14:6 identifies Se'ir with the Chorim (Horites). Deuteronomy 2:12 explains this confusion by stating that Esav's descendants drove the Chorim out of Se'ir.
The Chorim were a northern Akkadian tribe who moved into northern Syria and eastern Anatolia at the end of the 3rd millennium BCE. These may be the same as the troglodytes who are described in Job 30:6 as "CHOREY APHAR VE CHEPHEIM (חֹרֵי עָפָר וְכֵפִים) - "dwellers in the clefts of the valleys", and who Iyov (Job) thought were the sons of Keturah, Av-Raham's second wife.
The first known reference to Edom is in a papyrus manuscript list of Pharaoh Seti 2, circa 1215 BCE. This group seems to have included both Chorim and Se'irites, which further explains the confusion. Edom was conquered by David circa 994 BCE. The selling of the birthright should be seen as a mythological justification of a historical conquest. Numbers 20:14 has Edom as a brother of Yisra-El, though probably this is intended as a way of saying "ally", or at least "peaceable neighbour". 2 Samuel 8:14 has David garrisoning Edom. 2 Kings 8:20 ff and 2 Chronicles 21:8 ff tell the story of Edom's revolt against King Yehoram. 2 Kings 14:7 tells of King Amats-Yahu's (Amaziah's) reconquest of Edom two hundred years later. But this did not last, and Edom remained independent until it became the dominant group (Idumea is Edom), through Herod's murder of King Aristobulus and his marriage to Princess Mariamne. With Augustus' support etc... but this has become irrelevant to our verse, except to note that late Midrashic versions of Esav tie him into the Herodean era, the link with Rome seen as Herod's revenge for the taxing and forced conversion etc of his people by Yisra-El, all of which also explains why, in the early years of the 12th century, in Toledo in Spain (then under Moslem rule), the great poet Yehudah ha-Levi, writing about life as a Diasporal Jew with little chance of fulfilling the dream of a return to Israel, could state that:
25:30: VA YOMER ESAV EL YA'AKOV HA LE'ITENI NA MIN HA ADOM HA ADOM HA ZEH KI AYEPH ANOCHI AL KEN KARA SHEMO EDOM
וַיֹּאמֶר עֵשָׂו אֶל יַעֲקֹב הַלְעִיטֵנִי נָא מִן הָאָדֹם הָאָדֹם הַזֶּה כִּי עָיֵף אָנֹכִי עַל כֵּן קָרָא שְׁמוֹ אֱדוֹם
KJ: And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom.
BN: And Esav said to Ya'akov, "Let me swallow, I beg you, some of this red, red stew, for I am exhausted." And this is why he is also named Edom.
The need to explain names becoming eventually manic! This time, a verse that was clearly added later, out of a second manic need: to make a clear connection between Esau and Edom, and to link it back through Adam to the source – a problematic source of course for the Beney Yisra-El, because if Adam was the progenitor of the Edomites, rather than them, then...the rest hardly needs stating.
HA LE'ITEYNI NA: I have used this translation, more out of spite than science; so many ludicrously bad translations of the Bible exist in the world, one can only go back again and again to Fra Roger Bacon, locked up in the 12th century for daring to suggest that his fellow Christians needed to learn Hebrew and study the Bible in the original, and not in bad Latin translations of inaccurate Greek translations, made by people who likewise did not speak Hebrew. NA is a polite, if rarely used because terribly formal, way of saying "please" - modern Ivrit uses BE VAKASHAH = "on request", which could surely be improved by saying "NA" - though on reflection, "na" sounds like a slurred and lazy "no", so maybe not! What is certain is that Esav asks very nicely, and a better translation would be, "can I get a bowl of that stew you're making, please". Where the niceness is lost, and it foreshadows the Ya'akov we are now going to spend many chapters of not-very-niceness with, is in his brother's cynical and callous response. Who ever heard of a brother selling a bowl of stew in exchange for an entire inheritance? You get home, your brother's cooking the dinner, you grab a spoon or fork, and tuck in.
Why the repetition of HA ADOM HA ADOM (האדם האדם)? It makes Esav sound extremely dense; this suggests that he was known as "the red man" because he referred to the food as "that red stuff"! The later emphasis on Esav as Edom is more illuminating here; though the connection between the grass of Esav (see note to verse 25) and the red earth of Edom is somewhat unclear. Like all of his lineage, starting with Adam, he is associated with the colour red, the colour of Edom: his hair was supposedly red, and now the food for which he sells his birthright is doubly red. The connection is also with Se'ir, and Mount Se'ir especially, as noted in Numbers 24:18, 2 Chronicles 25:11 and 2 Kings 14:7. But Genesis 14:6 identifies Se'ir with the Chorim (Horites). Deuteronomy 2:12 explains this confusion by stating that Esav's descendants drove the Chorim out of Se'ir.
The Chorim were a northern Akkadian tribe who moved into northern Syria and eastern Anatolia at the end of the 3rd millennium BCE. These may be the same as the troglodytes who are described in Job 30:6 as "CHOREY APHAR VE CHEPHEIM (חֹרֵי עָפָר וְכֵפִים) - "dwellers in the clefts of the valleys", and who Iyov (Job) thought were the sons of Keturah, Av-Raham's second wife.
The first known reference to Edom is in a papyrus manuscript list of Pharaoh Seti 2, circa 1215 BCE. This group seems to have included both Chorim and Se'irites, which further explains the confusion. Edom was conquered by David circa 994 BCE. The selling of the birthright should be seen as a mythological justification of a historical conquest. Numbers 20:14 has Edom as a brother of Yisra-El, though probably this is intended as a way of saying "ally", or at least "peaceable neighbour". 2 Samuel 8:14 has David garrisoning Edom. 2 Kings 8:20 ff and 2 Chronicles 21:8 ff tell the story of Edom's revolt against King Yehoram. 2 Kings 14:7 tells of King Amats-Yahu's (Amaziah's) reconquest of Edom two hundred years later. But this did not last, and Edom remained independent until it became the dominant group (Idumea is Edom), through Herod's murder of King Aristobulus and his marriage to Princess Mariamne. With Augustus' support etc... but this has become irrelevant to our verse, except to note that late Midrashic versions of Esav tie him into the Herodean era, the link with Rome seen as Herod's revenge for the taxing and forced conversion etc of his people by Yisra-El, all of which also explains why, in the early years of the 12th century, in Toledo in Spain (then under Moslem rule), the great poet Yehudah ha-Levi, writing about life as a Diasporal Jew with little chance of fulfilling the dream of a return to Israel, could state that:
and I deep in the West;
my food has no taste -
how could it be sweet?
How can I fulfil my vows
with Zion in the power of Edom
and I in the fetters of Arabia?
It will be nothing to leave
all the goodness of Spain,
so rich is the dust
of the ruined sanctuary."
25:31: VA YOMER YA'AKOV MICHRAH CHAYOM ET BECHORAT'CHA LI
וַיֹּאמֶר יַעֲקֹב מִכְרָה כַיּוֹם אֶת בְּכֹרָתְךָ לִי
KJ: And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.
BN: And Ya'akov said, "First sell me your birthright."
MICHRAH (מכרה): is this not the feminine form? MICHREH would be the masculine. But even then it is unusual, and presumably reflects a specific time-period when this was how it was said. TIMKOR LI would be the expected form.
It is a very odd chain of events though. Your brother asks for food and you demand his birthright as payment; there has to be more to this than meets the eye. Did Esav think that Ya'akov was being ironic? Was Esav incapable of simply refusing Ya'akov's offer of potage and finding some food on his own? Where was his mother at the time (no, forget that question; she would have taken Ya'akov's side)? And we have been told repeatedly how wealthy the family was, how many servants they had - so why was Ya'akov doing the cooking anyway?
Hertz maintains that the birthright privileges were purely spiritual; with the head of the clan acting as priest; but even this is a fair birthright. And, of course, one of the privileges of the priest was to get the best cut of meat - red, red meat included! So is the domestic story yet another diminution of an original myth, in the same way that Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and Robin Hood have become "fairy stories" where they were previously mythological legends of the gods and goddesses? And if so, domesticated man taking over from "uncultivated man"?
If ultimogeniture was in place anyway, as we have seen with Yitschak and Yishma-El, then Ya'akov didn't need to acquire the birthright, because Esav didn't have one. Or does birthright here mean something other than material inheritance? We can deduce that it must do, because he repeats the theft later on - by stealing the real birthright, the father's formal blessing. And of course there is one other option, though it seems remote and implausible, and would need a Freud, an Adler, a Rogers to explain it, with or without the Akeda as their starting-point: does the birthright include the sacrifice, or the Pidyon Ha Ben? And if yes, why would anybody want it?
25:32: VA YOMER ESAV HINEH ANOCHI HOLECH LAMUT VE LAMAH ZEH LI BECHORAH
וַיֹּאמֶר עֵשָׂו הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי הוֹלֵךְ לָמוּת וְלָמָּה זֶּה לִי בְּכֹרָה
KJ: And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?
BN: And Esav said, "Look at me, I am at death's door. What use do I have for some one-day birthright?"
Why does he say he is going to die? Hyperbole? Just plain bad story-telling? Or something else about this story that has been excised by the Redactor? Maybe he came in from hunting wounded, and really was dying, and not from hunger; in which case the sale of his birthright in exchange for sustaining his life... I merely speculate, a most unscholarly thing to do, I know. As my very colloquial translation is also very unscholarly, I know.
25:33: VA YOMER YA'AKOV HISHAV'AH LI KAYOM VA YISHAV'A LO VA YIMKOR ET BECHORATO LE YA'AKOV
וַיֹּאמֶר יַעֲקֹב הִשָּׁבְעָה לִּי כַּיּוֹם וַיִּשָּׁבַע לוֹ וַיִּמְכֹּר אֶת בְּכֹרָתוֹ לְיַעֲקֹב
KJ: And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.
BN: And Ya'akov said, "Swear me an oath first". And he swore him an oath, and he sold his birthright to Ya'akov.
What are they really swearing to? The red stuff must be eucharistic in some way. Blood? Or is the red stuff actually part of the birthright-selling ceremony?
Note that BECHORATO comes from the root BACHUR meaning "elder" or "first-born", though it has today come to be used to mean "boy", with BACHURAH as "girl". By selling him his birthright (BECHORATO), does Ya'akov then become technically the first-born - this was the inference of my question about Akeda and Pidyon Ha Ben above? This after all is what happens to Parets and Zerach, and then to Menasheh and Ephrayim, where Ya'akov is himself the one who effects the switch of birthright-entitlement, by placing his hands on their heads diagonally to bless them, and thereby making the first second and the second first (Genesis 48:14); so there has to be more to this than meets the eye. Do we need to reconsider what might have been going on in the womb, with Ya'akov clutching his brother's heel, possibly to get himself dragged out, possibly - but this again needs the assistance of the psyche-professors - possibly to prevent Esav getting out, so that he could get out first and claim the birthright even then?
What is not mentioned in the story is: did anyone bother to tell Yitschak and Rivkah that they had negotiated this transaction? Because, if not, how can it mean anything anyway? At the end of this part of the tale, when Ya'akov steals the blessing too, Yitschak is still expecting Esav to come to receive it – so clearly no one ever did tell him. And that being the case, it is actually completely meaningless except as a nice folk-tale and the first indication of what a nasty man and complete mommy's-boy Ya'akov is going to turn out to be. And yet from him comes the holy nation of Yisra-El!
KAYOM: What grammatical point am I missing, that it is KAYOM here, but was CHAYOM in verse 31?
25:34: VE YA'AKOV NATAN LE ESAV LECHEM U NEZID ADASHIM VA YOCHAL VA YESHT VA YAKAM VA YELACH VA YIVEZ ESAV ET HA BECHORAH
וְיַעֲקֹב נָתַן לְעֵשָׂו לֶחֶם וּנְזִיד עֲדָשִׁים וַיֹּאכַל וַיֵּשְׁתְּ וַיָּקָם וַיֵּלַךְ וַיִּבֶז עֵשָׂו אֶת הַבְּכֹרָה
KJ: Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised hisbirthright.
BN: And Ya'akov gave Esav bread and lentil stew; and he ate, and he drank, and he rose up, and he went his way. So Esav despised his birthright.
Stylistically glorious verse, and... and... and... and
He gives him bread, which is logical after the red stuff if it is blood; but why the lentils? Probably for no mythological, liturgical, metaphorical, allegorical, sociological, symbolic or metaphyisco-mystico-esoteric reason at all, but just because they go well with tomato soup and goulash. No meat though. Definitely no meat. What do you need to put into lentils, besides tomatoes, to make it so deeply red?
In the above story takes place one of the most important myths of the Beney Yisra-El, and of the later Yehudim even more: Edom dispossessed by Yisra-El, given authority by the most ancient of all rites, the killing (here the symbolic killing) of the firstborn. The cult of the Beney Yisra-El, and later Judaism as well, have never made all that much of it; yet in truth it stands alongside the Lech Lecha, the Akeda, the dream-ladder, the wrestling-match and Mount Sinai as the central pillars of the cult; its importance being more historical than religious, but the claim to the land of Israel depends as much on this as any covenant with the deity.
Pey break; end of chapter 25
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Genesis: 1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2c 2d 3 4a 4b 4c/5 6a 6b 7 8 9 10 11a 11b 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25a 25b 26a 26b 27 28a 28b 29 30a 30b 31a 31b/32a 32b 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44a 44b 45 46 47a 47b 48 49 50
Genesis: 1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2c 2d 3 4a 4b 4c/5 6a 6b 7 8 9 10 11a 11b 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25a 25b 26a 26b 27 28a 28b 29 30a 30b 31a 31b/32a 32b 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44a 44b 45 46 47a 47b 48 49 50
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