GEN1406 Isaac fully understood the nature of his two sons. He loved Esau but this did not blind him to the fact that Jacob would be the heir of the covenant. Therefore Isaac prepared two sets of blessings, one for Esau, the other for Jacob. He blessed Esau Genesis 27:28-29 with the gifts he felt he would appreciate, wealth and power: “May God give you heaven’s dew and earth’s richness-an abundance of grain and new wine”- that is, wealth; “May nations serve you and peoples bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers, and may the sons of your mother bow down to you” - that is, power. These are not the covenantal blessings. The covenantal blessings that God had given Abraham and Isaac were completely different. They were about children and a land. It was this blessing that Isaac later gave Jacob before he left home Genesis 28:3-4: “May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples”- that is, children; “May He give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham, so that you may take possession of the land where you now reside as a foreigner, the land God gave to Abraham”-that is, land. This was the blessing Isaac had intended for Jacob all along. There was no need for deceit and disguise. Jacob eventually came to understand all this, perhaps during his wrestling match with the angel during the night before his meeting with Esau after their long estrangement. What happened at that meeting is incomprehensible unless we understand that Jacob was giving back to Esau the blessings he had wrongly taken from him. The massive gift of sheep, cattle, and other livestock represented “heaven’s dew and earth’s richness”- That is, wealth. The fact that Jacob bowed down seven times to Esau was his way of fulfilling the words, “May the sons of your mother bow down to you”-That is, power. Jacob gave the blessing back. Indeed, he said so explicitly. He said to Isaac: “please accept the blessing [birkati] that was brought to you, for God has been gracious to me and I have all I need” Genesis 33:11. In this reading of the story, Rebecca and Jacob made a mistake-a forgivable one, an understandable one, but a mistake nonetheless. The blessing Isaac was about to give Esau was not the blessing of Abraham. He intended to give Esau a blessing appropriate to him. In so doing, he was acting on the basis of precedent. God had blessed Ishmael with the words, “I will make him into a great nation” Genesis 21:18. This was the fulfillment of a promise God had given Abraham many years before when He told him that it would be Isaac, not Ishmael, who would continue the covenant Genesis 17:18–21. Isaac surely knew this because, according to a midrashic tradition, he and Ishmael were reconciled later in life. We see them standing together at Abraham’s grave Genesis 25:9. It may be that this was a fact that Rebecca did not know. She associated blessing with covenant. She may have been unaware that Abraham wanted Ishmael blessed even though he would not inherit the covenant, and that God had acceded to the request. If so then it is possible all four people acted rightly as they understood the situation, yet still tragedy occurred. Isaac was right to wish Esau blessed in the same way as Abraham had wanted Ishmael blessed. Esau acted honorably towards his father. Rebecca sought to safeguard the future of the covenant. Jacob felt qualms but did what his mother said, knowing that she would not have proposed deceit without a strong moral reason for doing so. Do we have to here one story with two possible interpretations? Perhaps, but that is not the best way of describing it. What we have here, and there are other such examples in Genesis, is a story we understand one way the first time we hear it, and a different way once we have discovered and reflected on all that happened later. It is only after we have read about the fate of Jacob in Laban’s house, the tension between Leah and Rachel, and the animosity between Joseph and his brothers that we can go back and read Genesis 27, the chapter of the blessing, in a new light and with greater depth. There is such a thing as an honest mistake, and it is a mark of Jacob’s greatness that he recognized it I made amends to Esau. In the great encounter twenty-two years later, the estranged brothers met, embraced, parted, and went their separate ways. But first, Jacob had to wrestle with an angel. That is how the moral life is. We learned by making mistakes. We live life forwards, but we understand it only looking back. Only then do we see the wrong turns we inadvertently made. This discovery is sometimes our greatest moment of moral truth.   Each of us has a blessing that is our own. That was true not just of Isaac but also Ishmael, not just of Jacob but also Esau. The moral could not be more powerful. Never seek your brother’s blessing. Be content with your own. [This message later became the 10th of the 10 Commandments]. SACKS 37-9