Thread by @JoelBaden

#Genesis 27:41-45

Rebekah sends Jacob away

Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing - and why not? Jacob has been nothing but awful to him. The other place the word for “hated” here shows up in J? Joseph’s brothers hoping Joseph doesn’t hate them for what they did (Gen 50:15).

Which is to say, this isn’t really hate like “hold a grudge against,” as the JPS takes it, which implies some lack of charity on the part of the subject. At least in J, it’s used for righteous anger. As for Esau’s desire to kill Jacob, we don’t know if he’s just venting. Maybe.

I will say that the narrator is keeping things a little loose here: Esau makes the threat talking to himself, בלבו, “in his heart,” but someone somehow overhears it and tells Rebekah. Who and how is elided by the use of the passive, “Rebekah was told.” Lazy writing, methinks.

Now for the most fun source-critical part here. In the next section, 27:46-28:9, Isaac is blessing Jacob (again!) and sending him off to Paddan-Aram to get married. But here, in the passage we’re reading, I’m 100% certain that Isaac is already dead.

Three reasons, and one adjustment to the text: 1. Isaac won’t ever show up again in J. Though Rebekah has obviously set herself up as Jacob’s main parental advisor, it’s still notable that Jacob is totally unmentioned in this passage.

2. Rebekah says that Esau is “consoling himself” by planning to kill Jacob. That looks, canonically, like consoling himself over the loss of the blessing. But this word is used regularly for consolation at deaths:

Isaac for Sarah (24:67), Jacob for Joseph (37:35), Judah for his wife (38:12), and those are just from J. Plenty of others outside the Pentateuch (notably in the David story: 2 Sam 12:24, 13:39).

3. Rebekah says “let me not lose you both in one day” - and I don’t think she means Esau, who wouldn’t be lost at all except in some strained metaphorical sense. “You both” is Isaac and Jacob. Remember, Isaac’s blessing is from his deathbed. He should die right when he’s done.

So I suspect, with a pretty high degree of certainty, that J had Isaac die right there between Gen 27:40 and 41. He finishes blessing Esau, he dies, and Esau immediately expresses (silently yet audibly somehow) his intention to kill Jacob. And on to the end, all in one day.

And if I’m right, then we have to make one change to the text, but it’s a reasonable one anyway. Esau says he will kill Jacob, according to our text as it stands, “when the days of mourning for my father have come,” יקרב. This has never really made sense.

I understand how it’s usually taken: as soon as my father dies I’ll kill him. But two issues with that. First, why wait? To spare Isaac’s feelings? Isaac loved Esau more, and is furious at Jacob for the trick. And do Rebekah’s feelings count for nothing? It’s a bit off.

And second, periods of mourning aren’t times for action. They’re times when everyone is supposed to do nothing (Gen 50:10; Deut 34:8; 2 Sam 11:27, to pick but a few prominent examples). Esau wouldn’t plan a murder then - he’d be desecrating the death of his beloved father.

The solution is relatively easy: instead of reading יקרב “have come, approached,” we should read יעבר, “have passed,” just as we find in 2 Sam 11:27. It’s a small change, in terms of the Hebrew, but it makes much more narrative sense.

And, of course, it makes sense especially, if not only, when Isaac has actually just died. Esau can’t act on his wishes right now, even though he’s furious at the moment, because Isaac has just died and requires the mourning period.

What this means also is that Jacob is sent away from home during the mourning period for Isaac, which I think is pretty poignant, given that his last encounter with his father was one in which he tricked him, and pretended to be Esau.