Day 3, Genesis 27-36

Today's reading centers mostly on the exploits of Jacob, the younger twin son of Isaac and Rebecca. As we know from our prior reading, Jacob is the favorite of his mother and has already tricked his brother out of his birthrite in exchange for a bowl of delicious lentil soup. Our tale continues with another instance of good old fashioned biblical fucking over.

At the beginning of chapter 27, Isaac is on his deathbed and wishes to give his blessing to Esau, his older son. He instructs the lad to go hunting and make him a savory dish (so we can safely assume he didn't have oatmeal as his last meal, as I would) but while Esau is in the wilderness, Rebecca comes up with a scheme so that her younger son might inherit the blessing in Esau's stead. Knowing that Isaac has gone mostly blind, she prepares a savory dish herself and instructs Jacob to present it to his father, pretending to be Esau. Jacob apparently has no moral qualms with this plan, but is concerned with the logistics: "But my brother Esau is a hairy man...and my skin is smooth. Suppose my father touches me; he will know I am playing a trick on him and I shall bring a curse instead of a blessing on myself" (Gen 27:11-12). Rebecca tells him to shut up and do it anyway.

Isaac is initially surprised that "Esau" was able to find the game so quickly, but Jacob quells his suspicion by attributing his speediness to help from "the Lord your God [who] put it in my way" (Gen 27:20). This is  ethically acceptable?!!! Well, okay. Isaac is sufficiently convinced and bestows his blessing on Jacob, promising him prosperity, many descendants, and authority over his brother.

When Esau finally returns and the scam is revealed, he is understandably pretty pissed off. He vows to kill Jacob, and fearing for the life of her favorite son, Rebecca sends him away to find her brother, Laban, in Harran. She hopes that he will marry a Caananite woman there, since she is "weary to death of Hittite women" (Gen 27:46). He follows her instructions and meets Laban near a well, along with his daughters, Rachel and Leah. Prior to this, he has a pretty famous dream with angels going up and down a ladder, and God promises him more success and offspring and so on and so forth. For some reason, Jacob is super entitled to lots of good things even though he has demonstrated himself on countless occasions to be an asshole with a capital 'A'.

Rachel is described as being hot stuff, while Leah is homely and unattractive. His reasoning is a little shallow by modern standards, but I couldn't help thinking that Jacob was a bit of a sweetie pie when he falls in love with Rachel. This is the first mention of romantic love we have seen! How cute. He tells Laban that he will work for seven years to marry Rachel, and his uncle agrees to this plan. When the seven years are over ("and they seemed like a few days because he loved her" (Genesis 29:20) -- aaaaawwwwww) Jacob is psyched to seal the deal, but on his wedding night, scandal ensues! Laban sends Leah into the marital tent instead of Rachel, and Jacob accidentally consummates his marriage with the wrong woman. Enraged that someone else has adopted HIS favorite past time of biblically fucking people over, Jacob confronts Laban, who explains that it is against tradition for the younger daughter to be married off before the older, and he will have to work another seven years to win Rachel. Apparently, Jacob did not catch onto this custom in spite of living in the region for like a decade, and he has no choice but to comply.

After the second round of indentured servitude Jacob finally succeeds in his goal, takes his second wife, and chapter 30 follows with an exciting account of the competitive baby-making that ensues. Because God pities her, he makes Leah significantly more fertile than her sister, and she manages to have something like five sons before Rachel can produce any. In her jealousy Rachel provides one of her slaves to Jacob for further baby-making, and Leah counters with one of her slaves. Babies are popping up everywhere, mostly sons, and one daughter named Dinah. We will return to Dinah in a bit. After a long freaking time, Rachel finally sires her firstborn, a boy named Joseph.

The happy family lives peaceably for time, but after awhile Jacob becomes frustrated with how Laban continually partakes in the biblical practice of fucking him over, changing his wages and trying to cheat him out of what he is owed. Laban's sons also begin to suspect that Jacob is becoming wealthy at the expense of Laban, and so Jacob decides to return to his native land with his family. They stow away in the middle of the night, and Rachel steals her father's idols, unbeknownst to Jacob.

Laban tracks them down and throws a hissy fit about how they left without saying goodbye and stole his idols and so on and so forth. Jacob admits that he was worried Laban would try and take Rachel and Leah from him -- a reasonable concern, I think, given that everyone in this story is a total asshole -- and says that he has no freaking idea where the idols are. Laban searches all the tents, but is unable to find them because Rachel sits on top of them and claims that she is on her period and thus can't stand up. A clever ruse!

Laban parts on reasonably good terms with Jacob, and they set up a covenant and build a stone pillar together. Then Jacob continues the journey homeward, and I am delighted to say that in the following section we encounter a character who does something halfway decent!

Jacob is concerned about his brother Esau, who he fears might still be angry about the whole "birthrite for soup trade" and the stolen blessing. He prepares a large gift from his herds as a sort of bribe, and splits up his party into groups so that if Esau attacks one, the others might survive. To his credit, Jacob does show some remorse, proclaiming that "I am not worthy of all the true and steadfast love which [God has] shown to me" (Gen 32:10).

But these precautions are unnecessary, because Esau behaves like a true champ. Upon seeing his jerkwad of a brother, who robbed him of everything he had, he runs to Jacob and embraces him!

Wow!

So let us take a moment and applaud Esau, who has shown some real decency for the first time in this crazy book. In Mark Twain's book, The Innocents Abroad, there is a lovely passage about this act of forgiveness, which I will share with you now. It makes allusions to some parts of Joseph's life that we have not yet reached in our reading, but I think the quote is straightforward enough to understand in spite of this.

"Joseph became rich, distinguished, powerful--as the Bible expresses it, "lord over all the land of Egypt." Joseph was the real king, the strength, the brain of the monarchy, though Pharaoh held the title. Joseph is one of the truly great men of the Old Testament. And he was the noblest and the manliest save Esau. Why shall we not say a good word for the princely Bedouin? The only crime that can be brought against him is that he was unfortunate. Why must everybody praise Joseph's great-hearted generosity to his cruel brethren without stint of fervent language, and fling only a reluctant bone of praise to Esau for his still sublimer generosity to the brother who had wronged him? Jacob took advantage of Esau's consuming hunger to rob him of his birthright and the great honor and consideration that belonged to the position; by treachery and falsehood he robbed him of his father's blessing; he made of him a stranger in his home and a wanderer. Yet after twenty years had passed away and Jacob met Esau and fell at his feet, quaking with fear and begging piteously to be spared the punishment he knew he deserved, what did that magnificent savage do? He fell upon his neck and embraced him! When Jacob -- who was incapable of comprehending nobility of character -- still doubting, still fearing, insisted upon 'finding grace with my lord' by the bribe of a present of cattle, what did the gorgeous son of the desert say?

'Nay, I have enough, my brother; keep that thou hast unto thyself.'

Esau found Jacob rich, beloved by wives and children, and traveling in state, with servants, herds of cattle, and trains of camels -- but he himself was still the uncourted outcast this brother had made him. After thirteen years of romantic mystery, the brethren who had wronged Joseph came, strangers in a strange land, hungry and humble, to buy 'a little food:' and being summoned to a palace, charged with crime, they beheld in its owner their wronged brother; they were trembling beggars -- he, the lord of a mighty empire! What Joseph that ever lived would have thrown away such a chance to "show off"? Who stands first -- outcast Esau forgiving Jacob in prosperity or Joseph on a king's throne forgiving the ragged tremblers whose happy rascality placed him there?"

Three cheers for Esau! The dapper woodsman departs and at this point, and our narrative shifts in chapter 34 to focus on Dinah, Leah's daughter by Jacob.

The family settles in a town called Shechem in Canaan, and on a stroll to visit the women of the district (whatever that means), Dinah is raped by the son of a local prince named... uh... Shechem. Wasn't that the name of the town too? Jacob and his sons are pretty mad about this, but apparently for different reasons. Jacob's concern is not that his daughter was violated against her will, but that she was violated against her will by an uncircumcised man. He still had a foreskin, for crying out loud! Shechem's father, Hamor the Hivite, bargains with Jacob, claiming that Shechem was just in love and doing what any lad would do. Jacob -- perhaps remembering his own courtship of the lovely Rachel -- agrees to give his daughter to Shechem if he and all of his community become circumcised. They consent, but only a few days later -- in an outburst of brotherly rage that would make Quentin Compson proud -- two of Jacob's sons, Simeon and Levi, go into the town and kill all the men.

Jacob confronts them, saying in essence, "What the hell are you doing?! You're making me look like a lying asshole!"

The brothers reply, in a very Faulknerian manner: "Is our sister to be treated as a common whore?" (Gen 34:31)

Good for them? Maybe? I am not really sure what to make of this one. At least they seemed to have their sister's best interests at heart.

Since chapter 36 contains only a very dry summary of the noble Esau's lineage and future offspring, chapter 35 is the last section of real interest in today's reading. This is lucky, as I have class in ten minutes! In this section, Jacob makes a covenant with God along the same line as Abraham's covenant, and has his name changed to Israel. Yeah, like the country. He founds the town of Bethel, and continues to journey onward, but during his trip Rachel goes into labor and dies. Her last child is a son, who she calls Ben-oni, but in his classic asshole manner Jacob ignores the request of his dying wife and instead calls the child Benjamin. In fairness, Benjamin is a nicer name. So in the end Jacob has twelve sons from four wives. At the end of this chapter, Isaac reaches the ripe age of 180 and dies, which seems a little misplaced since didn't he give Jacob his blessing while he was on his deathbed? We won't probe too far into this mystery.

Alas, I have an econ conference to be getting to, so I will end this account here! Tomorrow's reading will take us to chapter 47 of Genesis. See you then.