Genesis: Chapters 25 to 30

Exit Abraham. Enter Jacob - in all his wily glory.

CHAPTER 25

This one gets off to a stunning start: “Abraham took another wife” – Dude!  Abraham was 137 when Sarah died.  Though we read here that this new one bore him six kids.  Well, apparently she was more a concubine and the footnotes say this could’ve happened before Sarah died.  I’d say it would have to, but then again Genesis plays all sorts of weird timeline games.  Abraham would hardly be the first centurion to have kids.  He gives those extra sons some bling and sends them away.  No one is to interfere with Isaac’s inheritance.

Then Abraham dies at the ripe old age of 175.  So I guess he could’ve had all those kids later and still had time to send them away. 

What do we make of Abraham?  Overall, I found him a likable and compelling character.  There were some questionable moments, as when he essentially pimped out his wife in Egypt.  But the moments that I found most striking were his haggling with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as the time he burst out laughing when God said he’d have a son.  Even with his flaw, there’s something remarkably human about him.

Even the near-sacrifice of Isaac, I can understand.  It’s based on when it happens in his story.  If it happens early, Abraham would have to be something of a monster to go along with it.  But by this time he’s already seen miracles happen, most notably a far too old couple conceiving their first child.  That gave him faith – more faith that he had when he fell down laughing, obviously.  And I can appreciate the way he doesn’t displace himself in that story, still calling Isaac “my son.”  And it did work out – otherwise there would be nothing redeeming in Abraham – or God for that matter).   Then again, Abraham was the first person to flip around the question of morality on God.  By this time, Abraham had come to trust God’s morality, and in fact God did live up to his end of the bargain here, not having Abraham kill his son. 

At any rate, back to Chapter 25.  When Abraham dies, by my math he’s still outlived by the guys from Generations 13 and 14, though Gen 13 will be dead soon. 

Ishmael has kids and dies at age 137, which I put at Year 2171.  By now, Eber – Generation 14, has just 16 years left.  So the weird overlap between pure myth guys and the rest is still going on. 

But the main event is the birth of Jacob and Esau.  Isaac was 40 when married and 60 when they are born.  So they’re actually born 15 years before Abraham dies.  Esau is red and hairy, apparently a reference to the fact that the kingdom of Edom had red dirt, and his hairiness is wordplay, as another word for Edom was Seir, and the Hebrew word for hair was se’ar.  Jacob comes out gripping Esau’s heel. 

Esau is the first dumb jock and Jacob the first conniving con man.  Esau can hunt, but he sure doesn’t think things through much, and Jacob takes advantage.  Esau sells his birthright to Jacob for some stew.  Really, Esau?  He says he’s starving, but it’s hard to take that too seriously.  If he’s that hungry, he should’ve come in from the hunt much earlier than he did.  If not, he’s just getting rid of his birthright out of impatience.

Jacob doesn’t come off too well here – he’s playing angles here.  But writing the paragraph above I felt for him a bit.  He and his brother are born at damn near the same time, but because Hairy Red came out a few minutes first, he gets advantages.  How is that fair?  How is that just?  He can hunt, sure, but he’s as dumb as a post.  Maybe I can use that to write the wrong of random birth order.  So he does.  And Esau walks right into it. 

Note – you can see the influence of pre-literate culture here.  Nowadays, you say something and it doesn’t mean anything unless it’s written down.  In this story and Isaac’s blessing later on, the spoken word is all-important.  That’s all they had.

Oh, and before the stew-for-birthright swap, Rebekah gets a message from the Lord that Jacob will be superior to Esau.  Is this just some post-facto justification to get us to side w/ Jacob and help us understand what Rebekah will soon do?  Seems like it.

There’s also a note that Isaac prefers Esau because Esau is a hunter and Isaac likes beef.  That’s a little reminiscent of how the Lord preferred Abel’s meet offerings to Cain’s veggies. 

CHAPTER 26

This story again?  Isaac and Rebekah move due to famine and Isaac hides that their husband-wife because she’s so beautiful and …. Again?  We had it twice with Abraham and once more here?  Jeez, this family was paranoid.  And it always plays out the same way.  It’s mentioned after they have kids, but there is no indication of kids here, so apparently it’s out of order in the book. Or something. 

Aside from that, there’s some haggling over well water rights. 

Oh, and Esau angers his parents by marrying a local girl.  Never thinking things through, that Esau.

CHAPTER 27

Now for the other famous story involving Isaac – getting deceived by Jacob and Rebekah.  Blind and unsure how much time he has left, he tells Esau to hunt, make a good meal for Isaac and he’ll give his favorite son a blessing. 

Rebekah springs into action.  She tells Jacob that they’ll serve a meal to Isaac before Esau gets back to claim the blessing for Rebekah’s favorite.  Jacob’s only qualm is a pragmatic one, not a moral one.  My brother is hairy so dad will notice the difference.  Rebekah tells him to do as he’s told.  I must say, Rebekah is a real spitfire one.  She was a nice, modest, polite woman by the well, but she’s really damn determined to take charge here.  She has something to fight for, and she’ll go all the way for it.

She has Jacob put on goatskins so he’ll feel hairy like Esau.  Wait – Esau is as hairy as a goat?  Holy crud!  And best of all, Rebekah has Jacob put on Esau’s clothing. Isaac can sense something is off – why are you back so soon?  And why do you sound like Jacob?  But he feels like (thanks to the fur) and smells like (due to the clothing) Esau so he gets the blessing. 

Really, I can see why Isaac and Esau get along.  Both just kind of float through these Bible passages.  Esau likes to hunt and doesn’t think things through.  Isaac is passive and just glides through.  OK, so he checks the smell and feel of the kid, but he notices the voice is off.  Why not use a servant to double check?  He really puts himself into a position where he can lose badly.

In none of Isaac’s stories does he do much.  He gets bound by his dad at the near sacrifice.  His dad’s servant arranges his marriage.  Now he gets conned here.  He’s the Zeppo of the patriarchs.

Why is he in the Bible?  I figure they need a placeholder between Abraham and Jacob.  If Jacob were to con Abraham, we’d probably be much more upset with him, as we’ve come to care about Abraham.  We’ve never been given too much reason to care too deeply about Isaac.  Alternately, the story of the near-sacrifice of Abraham’s son doesn’t work well if there are twins. There has to be only one son there, so you need someone between Abraham and Jacob.  Isaac is there as filler to make the others’ stories work better.  In and of himself, he ain’t much.

At any rate, Esau wants to kill Jacob, and it’s hard to blame him.  Jacob has the smarts and has used it, but Esau has the brawn and can use it.  But he must wait until after his dad dies.  Otherwise, that would be too hurtful to the one who means the most to Esau.

Rebekah finds out and has a plan – send Jacob to her old hometown to marry a relative.  Smart plan.  She has a reason to give to Isaac why Jacob should leave that doesn’t open up wounds over the blessing.  And since Esau already is married, he can’t leave under a similar reason.

CHAPTER 28

Weird chapter break.  The bit at the end of 27 keeps going in early 28.  Rebekah’s plan works.  She’s a nice little strategist that one.  It’s like she was docile when young, but then again as an unmarried woman, she had limited options.  She got out as soon as she could and now that she has some power as mother, she’s using it to her full advantage.  Man, everyone in this household if far more compelling than Isaac.  Rebekah is easily the most compelling female so far.  She might be devious, but she fights for what she wants to happen and succeeds.  She’s rather admirable in her own right.

Esau decides to marry a woman from the family, but goes to Ishmael’s rejected line.  Oh that Esau.  He means well, but he’s outsmarted every time. 

At any rate, Jacob travels to his uncle’s place and has his famous dream of the ladder.  Except “ladder” is apparently a mistranslation.  It should be stairway, maybe a ziggurat.  He’s told the land he’s on is a sacred spot – Bethel.  And he puts a sacred pillar up to mark the spot.  (The footnotes say that Judaism later ended the practice of erected pillars because it was done by too many polytheistic tribes). 

I personally never quite got why this image has had such a hold on the consciousness of western civ, but regardless, here it is.

CHAPTER 29

Ah, the meeting of the con men.  Jacob sees Uncle Laban, who has two daughters.  Jacob loves the younger and prettier one, Rachel.  Laban cuts a deal – work for me for seven years and I’ll give you my daughter to wed.  So Jacob does and that night gets elder and plainer Leah.  How does Jacob not notice this until morning?  Well, maybe he was drunk and it was dark.  I dunno.  I just know that he doesn’t notice the switcheroo until morning.  (It’s the birth of the bed trick!  Shakespeare uses this twice, in All’s Well That Ends Well, and Measure for Measure).

Jacob protests – how can you do this to me?  Man, if this were any other character in the Bible I might feel for him, but as much as I like Jacob – c’mon, you’re a con man who got one-upped.  Man up, nancy boy!   Its’ a great character moment for Laban, too.  He’s still the same guy who got all happy when he saw the wealth Abraham’s servant had.  This is a family of sharpsters – Laban, Rebekah, Jacob all.

So he works seven more years and gets the daughter he wants.  The Lord takes pity on plain jane Leah, and gives her four kids while leaving Rachel barren: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah.

By the way, Jacob has now married two cousins.  His parents are cousins once removed.  His paternal grandparents are half-siblings.  This is keeping it a little too close in the family.

CHAPTER 30

Last chapter ended with Leah bearing Rueben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah.  Then she went from bearing to barren.  Now Rachel, who apparently can’t have any kids, offers her servant Bilhah to Jacob for sex, and she’ll adopt them as hers.  (OK, it’s the custom of the region – but has Bilhah been consulted?)  Bilhan gives him Dan and Naphtali.  Well, one of those names has a future.  Now it’s Leah’s turn to pimp out her servant, Ziplah in this case.  She also cranks out a pair of boys – Gad and Asher.  Gad?  There’s a name without much of a future. 

I should note it’s not really clear when the child bearing begins.   I’d assume Leah was giving birth in those years before Jacob married Rachel, but it’s in the Bible after the marriage to Rachel.  A matter of interpretation, I suppose.  (But it does play into how old Jacob is in all this.  Esau married at age 40, and Jacob left after that, and their twins.  So he had to work for seven years for Leah then another seven for Rachel  -- and later we learn that he works six more years for the flock.  So he’ll leave here in his 60s.  He always comes off about 20 years younger than that, but that’s how Genesis goes I guess.

Anyhow, after eight kids have been born, there comes a weird little segue.  Leah and Rachel make a weird deal.  Rachel will get the mandrake Leah’s kid gathered (mandrake being associated with fertility) and Rachel will let Leah sleep with Jacob.  So … what’s the point of getting the mandrake, Rachel?   Anyhow, it’s great because Leah goes to Jacob and says, “You must have intercourse with me, because I have hired you with my son’s mandrakes.”  Heh.  “Hired you”?  “Must have intercourse with me”?  I just imagine Jacob coming home from a long hard day working for his father-in-law and hearing this. 

Of course he sleeps with her – and she somehow undoes menopause.  Nine months later out comes Issachan.  She keeps the juices flowing, and later comes her sixth kids, Zebulun.  Oh, and while we’re at it, she has a daughter, the first one for Jacob apparently, Dinah.  Then Rachel finally gets lucky and gives birth to a son, Joseph.  Amazing techno-colored dreamcoat to come later.

Next comes a story pitting con man against con man: the master Laban versus young (well, 50-something technically) Jacob.  Jacob has two wives and wants some of the flock and makes an agreement.  Jacob will get the dark and streaked sheep, and Laban can keep the white ones that come from the flock.  OK, Laban agrees – and then has his dark and streaked ones given away to his sons elsewhere.  Now, not only are all remaining sheep white, but it doesn’t look like any non-whites will be born. But Jacob has this weird plan to use the shoots of poplar to make the sheep give birth to streaked and dark ones.  In reality, what’s apparently going on is that Jacob has asked for sheep with a recessive genetic trait, so sheep that aren’t the right color can still give birth to others.  Or something.  The thing is a bit confusing, but I read about this once on a book about genetics.  At any rate, Jacob gets the better of Laban and the sheep start being born his way.

Oh, and the chapters has Laban learning about the Lord through divination.  Now, divination isn’t allowed in Judaism but then again the religion hasn’t been really established yet and Laban isn’t a Jew.  But it’s an indication of polytheism during the early days of the Bible.  This alternate supernatural approach works some, too.  The fact that God is referred to as the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac is a sign of polytheism as well – he isn’t the God of all, just of this family. 

This chapter also has some prosperity gospel stuff as well, as Laban has prospered with Jacob working for him – and that’s only because God has wanted him to because of Jacob.

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