Tol’dot…"Generations"…Genesis 25:19-28:9

I'll be out of town at the annual meting of the Society of Biblical Literature this weekend, so I am posting a little early.

Parashat Toldot recounts Rebecca’s conception and delivery of Jacob and Esau, Isaac and Rebecca’s “visit” to King Abimelech, Esau’s marriage to Canaanite women, and Jacob’s purchase of Esau’s birthright and theft of Esau’s blessing.

As we saw last week through the variations on the betrothal type-scene, Rebecca is the ultimate powerful mother, the planner, the plotter, the one getting things done. Just as he has been from the start, Isaac is a much more passive character. He has been toyed with (by Ishmael), tied up (by Abraham) – he does not even get to go and get his own wife, but this task is delegated to another (Abraham’s servant)! Again in these chapters we see that Isaac is a rather flimsy personality a person acted upon rather than an actor. Rebecca is the powerhouse – it is through Rebecca’s machinations that the promise to Abraham is carried out. Isaac’s “seed” may be the vessel, but Rebecca is the instrument of the covenant.

Rebecca is also given to bouts of hyperbolic speech, which is something I love about the way she is portrayed. When the twins struggle in her womb, she says: “If it is to be this way, why do I live?” (Genesis 25:22) When she decides to send Jacob away from home for his own protection, she tells her husband: “I am weary of my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women such as these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?” (Genesis 27:46) All this over-the-top complaining makes me like her even more.

When Isaac and Rebecca travel to Gerar, Isaac passes off his wife as his sister, just as Abraham has done twice before. To view the three wife-sister narratives in parallel columns, click this link: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=ddbxqpcb_5c6g9xfdh&hl=en

This is a strange repetition. But notice that each time the story is told – or retold – we learn something different. There are three glaring problems with the first story, wherein Abraham lets Pharaoh take Sarah as a wife.
1. Abraham lies – he says that Sarah is his sister, when this has never been the explanation of their relationship before.
2. Worse…does Pharaoh have sex with Sarah?? The horror! Especially because in the next chapter she’ll give birth to Isaac, and we want to be sure about paternity!
3. Abraham seems to make a good deal of money off this little transaction…giving the reader the uncomfortable feeling that he successfully pimped out his wife.

The second wife-sister narrative solves each of these problems.
1. We are told that Sarah is in fact Abraham’s half-sister… so his statement is a half-truth.
2. We learn that God prevented Abimelech from having sexual intercourse with Sarah… from this the reader is supposed to logically infer that if God prevented a violation of Sarah in the second case, he surely must have done the same in the first scenario, we just are not told there that it happened. We can breathe a sigh of relief; Sarah’s virtue remains intact.
3. The money problem is also solved – Abimelech gives the silver to Sarah and not Abraham, saying “it is your exoneration before all who are with you; you are completely vindicated.”

So what is the point of the third wife-sister story? What do we learn? Maybe a little more about Isaac’s character.

Unlike Sarah, taken by both Pharaoh and Abimelech, Rebecca is taken by no one in Gerar… and Isaac isn’t very careful, they are caught in a compromising situation! So why the lie? It certainly IS and outright lie in this instance. Why expose Rebecca to such danger? Yes, he became wealthy in that land, but at what possible cost? How does this scenario influence your understanding of this patriarch?

As for Jacob and Esau, once again the younger usurps the elder. Notice that while Genesis 25:28 reads: “Isaac loved Esau, because he was fond of game; but Rebecca loved Jacob.” Yet Malachi 1:2-3 says: “…the LORD says ‘Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.’” Isn’t that a huge difference? In Genesis Rebecca loved Jacob more than Esau. In Malachi, Esau is not only hated, but it is GOD and not Rebecca doing the hating!

This not only seems a little hard on Esau, but has spawned some nasty rhetoric when communities identify themselves as Jacob (or his descendants) and their opponents as “Esau.” Rabbinic Judaism identified Esau as Rome:

[Isaac’s words in Genesis 27:22] “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau” [really refer to the people of Rome,] for Jacob rules only through his voice, but Esau [Rome} rules only through his hands.” Genesis Rabbah 65:19

Early (Pauline) Christianity decided that the Christ-as-messiah believing community was Jacob, and, ironically, that non-Christ-as-messiah believing Jews were “Esau.”

Romans 9:6-13 "It is not as though the word of God had failed. For not all Israelites truly belong to Israel, 7and not all of Abraham’s children are his true descendants; but ‘It is through Isaac that descendants shall be named after you.’ 8This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as descendants. 9For this is what the promise said, ‘About this time I will return and Sarah shall have a son.’ 10Nor is that all; something similar happened to Rebecca when she had conceived children by one husband, our ancestor Isaac. 11Even before they had been born or had done anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose of election might continue, 12not by works but by his call) she was told, ‘The elder shall serve the younger.’ 13As it is written,‘I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.’"

Such pain has been wrought by those asserting their connection to one of these twins! So few seemed to remember, that like Ishamel and Isaac, who came together to bury their father, Esau welcomed Jacob back to his homeland, and the two brothers made peace.