A dysfunctional family & the Biblical verse with the most verbs in it

[Andyhill]

Hi all!

This past Saturday we (Jews all over the world) read Genesis 25:19-28:9 as the weekly Torah reading. It begins the strange & sad saga of one of the Bible's great dysfunctional families: Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Esau.

Rebecca, fearing that Isaac will confer upon loutish Esau the status of heir to Abraham's revolutionary concepts of belief in the One God & ethical monotheism, quickly presses Jacob into a subterfuge that would haunt & redound upon Jacob again and again throughout his long life. She dresses Jacob up as Esau and hurries him off to see Isaac & obtain blessing conferring upon him the aforementioned status. Esau, conveniently forgetting what ocurred over a bowl of lentil soup many years before, is horrified and vows vengeance on his brother. Rebecca gets wind of this and sends Jacob off to Uncle Laban, ostensibly to seek a bride (so Isaac believes) but really to flee his brother's murderous wrath. She never sees her beloved younger son again. :wayy2 How soap opera-y can you get?

Adding to the tragedy, Rebecca was quite wrong regarding her husband's intentions vis-a-vis the Abrahamic birthright. Isaac did not intend to confer it upon Esau. How do we know this?

Look at what Isaac says to Jacob (in Gen. 28:3-4) as the latter was about to head off for faraway Uncle Laban, ostensibly to seek a bride, Note that this is after Isaac has become aware of the previous subterfuge & of Jacob's role in it.

And God Almighty bless you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, that you may be a congregation of peoples; and give you the blessing of Abraham, to you, and to your seed with you; that you may inherit the land of your sojournings, which G-d gave unto Abraham.

This is an inherently spiritual blessing, in strong contrast to the physical blessing that Isaac gave Jacob, thinking that the latter was Esau, in Gen. 27:27-29. Rebecca goofed big-time. How was this possible? How could she & her husband be so out of synch regarding their twin sons?

The answer, I think, is two-fold & contains a great lesson to parents everywhere.

The first part of the answer is (as one of my rabbis pointed out) that the only recorded instance in all of Genesis of Isaac & Rebecca actually speaking to each other is in Gen. 27:46 when Rebecca complains to Isaac that Esau's Hittite wives are driving her bonkers and that she is mortified that Jacob might marry a Hittite woman. Isaac & Rebecca did/could not communicate with each other. This lack of communication between husband & wife helped set the stage for the family tragedy. Our Sages suggest that Rebecca was in awe of her husband. After all, this was Isaac, Abraham's son, who was bound on the altar, staring up the opened Heavens, waiting to be offered to God. There may be a hint to this in the fact that Rebecca fell off her camel when she first caught sight of Isaac, see Gen. 24:64. Isaac was on such a rarefied spiritual level that he might have found it difficult to communicate with his wife about things that appeared mundane to him. Either way, Isaac and Rebecca didn't communicate well enough.

The second part of the answer is in Gen. 25:28.

Now Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison; and Rebecca loved Jacob.

Note, whereas Isaac loves Esau because...(because of what is entirely beside the point), Rebecca loves Jacob. See the difference? Rebecca loved Jacob unconditionally, she loved him for who he was. Isaac loved Esau because of something the latter did, his love for his son was not unconditional. As the proud parents of two little dynamos (Yohanan, who will be 9 next month 8 & Naor, who just turned 5), DW & I know that a) we cannot play favorites & b) we must love our boys unconditionally, simply for who they are.

Oh, yes, the verbs. Esau is remembered very poorly in our traditions. He is seen as a physical man, who lived for the pleasures & things of this world. He is seen as crude, coarse & selfish/self-centered. Look at Gen. 25:29-34, the bowl-of-lentil-soup story.

And Esau said to Jacob: 'Let me swallow, I pray you, some of this red, red [pottage]; for I am faint.'...And Jacob said: 'Sell me first your birth right.' And Esau said: 'Behold, I am at the point to die; and what profit shall the birthright do to me?' And Jacob said: 'Swear to me first'; and he swore unto him; and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. And Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way. So Esau despised his birthright.

In the original Hebrew, the first underlined word is ha'l'itani. This is the only time, in the entire Tanakh (what we call what our Christian friends call the "Old Testament"), that this word occurs. The l-a'-y root means something more akin to "guzzle down" or "devour" and implies an animal-like voracity.

The second underlined section, in the original Hebrew, reads: va'yachal, va'yesht, va'yakom, va'yalekh, va'yivez, "he ate, he drank, he rose, he left, he despised." Like an animal, Esau ate & drank until he was satiated & then (also like an animal) got up and left. (This is why Isaac only asked to feel Jacob-pretending-to-be-Esau after Jacob had said, "'Because the Lord your God sent me good speed". Such words were alien to Esau, who had no use for God, & Isaac knew it. Thus, he wanted to feel to find out just who it was who was speaking to him.

Genesis 25:34 has more verbs in it than any other verse in the Bible!

And we think dysfunctional families are a modern thing!

But crude & rude as he was, Esau didn't deserve such shabby treatment.

Our Sages note that an exactly identical phrase occurs in Genesis 27:34

When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a loud and bitter cry...

and Esther 4:1

Now when Mordecai knew all that was done, Mordecai rent his clothes, and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and he cried with a loud and a bitter cry

.

I quote from the late Prof. Nehama Leibowitz's (may her memory be for a blessing!) Studies in Bere****/Genesis:

The derivation of some special lesson from analogous phrasing recurring in different parts of the Tanakh is one of the commonplaces of Rabbinic exegesis. Our Sages connected the above phrase, describing the cry of Esau, with the identical wording that is applied to the cry of Mordecai in the book of Esther, on hearing of Haman's and Ahasuerus's edict to exterminate his people.

Between the lines they read a lesson of sin and its retribution after a lapse of centuries. Let us quote the Midrash, Bere**** Rabbah, 67, on this theme:

The punishment for wronging Esau did not follow immediately but remained suspended until the time was ripe.

(...).

The Almighty, who takes note of our tears, also takes note of those shed by the wicked Esau. They also are noted and cry out for retribution.

Be well!

Andyhill :hi