Jacob and Esau

Jacob had first blackmailed his brother Esau, exchanging a bowl of lentil stew for Esau’s birthright. Then, Jacob, in collaboration with his mother, Rebekah, disguised himself as his brother Esau and gave to his father the meal Isaac had asked of Esau. In his blindness and ignorance (metaphorically identical) Isaac blessed Jacob, the younger son. The meal itself had actually been prepared by Rebekah. When he returned Esau learned of the deception and weeping said, “Father, have you no blessing for me?” It was a painfully poignant moment. Esau was so angry that he even threatened to kill his brother. Overhearing Esau’s threat, Rebekah sent Jacob away to her brother’s home. After years of estrangement, Jacob headed back to Canaan and had to pass through Esau’s territory. Jacob feared that Esau would then exact his revenge. But Esau meets his brother with an embrace and invites he and his entire family and retinue to his home where they might feast, rest and renew their relationship. Jacob accepts Esau’s invitation but then heads in another direction to his home, standing up his waiting brother. I imagine Esau at the front door of his tent eagerly awaiting the arrival of Jacob and his family and retinue but who will not ever arrive. I try to imiagine how it might feel to wait at my front door for company that never arrives.

And then in Bereshit, Chapter 35:27-29 we read of the death of Esau and Jacob’s father, Isaac.  “And Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre, at Kiriath-arba—now Hebron—where Abraham and Isaac had sojourned. Isaac was a hundred and eight years old when he breathed his last and died. He was gathered to his kin in ripe old age; and he was buried by his sons Esau and Jacob.” I don’t rcall reading when Abraham and Isaac stayed in Hebron, nor does the Torah say how either Jacob or Esau had learned of their father’s death nor how Esau had traveled to Hebron. Since Isaac’s life and death mirrored that of his father, his burial, as that of his father Abraham, is attended by his sons, Jacob and Esau. Following the events on Mount Moriah, Isaac did not descend the mountain nor return home with his father. One story tells that Isaac descended on the opposite side of the mountain from Abraham and sojourned with his estranged brother, Ishmael. The two men probably had a great deal to discuss about their upbringing. And it is suggested that the half-brothers had not been estranged.. Thus, to learn that they had buried their father together does not surprise me. They buried Abraham in the space he had purchased for the burial of Sarah, his wife. Abraham’s funeral standing beside his brother Isaac. Interestingly, there is no mention if Isaac had also attended his mother’s funeral. Certainly, Ishmael might have felt less than interested in paying his respects towards the woman whose complaint had led to his banishment.  

Now, the Rabbis have treated Esau in a manner not dissimilar to the way Jacob had earlier behaved towards his brother: ill-treating and disappearing him! To my mind unjustifiably the Rabbis eventually turn Esau into the quintessential enemy of the Jews. What we do learn textually about Esau is that after Jacob escapes from home following his deceptive assumption of Esau’s character, so too does Esau leave home and journeys I believe to his uncle, Ishmael, the other cast out and badly treated son. As I have noted, Isaac had already been a sojourner with Ishmael after his father 
Abraham bound and almost sacrificed his son on Mount Moriah. I am certain that Ishmael and Isaac must have had a great deal to discuss concerning family matters. And when their father dies both sons return to bury him in the Cave of Machpelah, though there is no record of their attendance at their mother’s funeral earlier. By the time of Abraham’s subsequent death, these half-brothers had already processed their experience with their parents and had established their relationship on some firm basis. 

Then when Isaac dies we read that his sons, Esau and Jacob, buried him at Hebron in the Cave of Machpelah with their grandfather and grandmother. Interestingly, there is not even record of their mother Rebekah’s death and certainly not a single mention of her funeral, only that she, too, was buried in the cave first purchased by Abraham. Esau’s attendance at Isaac’s funeral surprises me: he would have stood next to Jacob who had blackmailed, deceived and stole from him.  Jacob doesn’t appear to have attempted any contact with his brother having left home after he deceptively received Isaac’s blessing, and except for meeting him in the desert there is no record of any attempt to meet with Esau. I wonder under these conditions what the two estranged brothers could possibly have said to each other? Esau’s experience and hurt could only have made any intimate talk impossible, nor had they shared similar experience in their upbringing that either might be willing to share. But I think that if Jacob apologized for his behavior then the whole history of the Jews would have to be rethought. If Jacob had apologized to Esau then the third of the patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac and now Jacob—would have to acknowledge how he had lied and cheated his way to the top. Alternatively, Esau might have to be understood as a far more admirable and sympathetic man than the Rabbis have described him and consider Jacob less so. Perhaps then Esau might be considered a fourth patriarch.

Vigils at death beds and attendances at funerals have been plotted lately in cultural products as moments of familial and friends reconciliations. I think of the films The Big Chill, His Three Daughters, This is How I Leave You, or The Skeleton Twins, or Normal People as examples of such plot lines in which family tensions get resolved during the periods of mourning. There have been others. But in these biblical stories there are no mentions of what the brothers might have spoken to each other. Perhaps the Torah doesn’t care what the brothers might have with each other; perhaps the Rabbis had preferred to ignore the maltreatment of Ishmael, Isaac and Esau. Their attendances at the funerals of their fathers could not have been moments of familial reconciliation. Maybe so. Of course, I would prefer that at my funeral the tension would arise from my absence at the event, but, alas, I am no Tom Sawyer.