GEN1253 Consider … the scene that transpired immediately after Jacob left his father. Esau returned from hunting and brought Isaac the food he had requested.
Genesis 27:33 – 36. It is impossible to Read Genesis 27--the text as it stands without commentary--and not to feel sympathy for Isaac and Esau rather than Rebecca and Jacob. The Torah is sparing in its use of motion. It is completely silent, for example, on the feelings of Abraham and Isaac towards the trial of the binding. Phrases like “trembled violently” and “burst out with a loud and bitter cry” [these verses] cannot but affect us deeply. Here is an old man who has been deceived by his younger son, and a young man, Isaac, feels cheated out of what was rightfully his. The emotions triggered by this scene stay with us long in the memory. Then consider the consequences. Jacob had to leave home for more than twenty years in fear of his life. He then suffered an almost identical deceit practiced against him by Laban when he substituted Leah for Rachel. When Rachel cried out, “Why did you deceive me [
rimitani]?” Laban replied: “It is
not done in our place to put the younger before the elder”
Genesis 29:25 – 26. Not only the act but even the words imply a punishment, measure for measure. “Deceit,” of which Jacob accuses Laban, is the very word Isaac used about Jacob. Laban’s reply sounds like a virtually explicit reference to what Jacob had done, as if to say, “We do not do in our place what you have just done in yours.” The result of Laban’s deception brought to grief to the rest of Jacob’s life. There was tension between Leah and Rachel. There was hatred between their children. Jacob was deceived yet again, this time by his sons, when they brought him Joseph’s bloodstained robe -- another deception of a father involving the use of clothes. The result was that Jacob was deprived of the company of his most beloved son for twenty-two years, just as Isaac was of Jacob. Asked by Pharaoh how old he was, Jacob replied, “Few and evil have been the years of my life”
Genesis 47:9 He is the only figure in the Torah to make a remark like this. It is hard not to read the text as a precise statement of the principle of measure for measure: as you have done to others, so will others do to you. The deception brought all concerned great grief, and this persisted into the next generation. My reading of the text is therefore this. The phrase in Rebecca’s oracle,
verav yaavod tzair, Genesis 25:23, is in fact ambiguous. It may mean, “The elder will serve the younger,” but it may also mean, “The younger will serve the elder.” It is what the Torah calls a
chidda,
Numbers 12:8, that is, and opaque, deliberately ambiguous communication. It suggested an ongoing conflict between the two sons and their descendants, but did not foretell who would win. SACKS 35-7
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