Jacob or Esau? Take Your Pick!

The children struggled together within her; and she said, “If it is thus, why do I live?”  So she went and enquired of the Lord, and the Lord said, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, born of you, shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.       (Genesis 25:22f. )

With our last post on Isaac, Abraham’s son, we entered into a new cycle of stories that center on Isaac’s son Jacob and his family.  In our posts, we will dig deep exegetically into these texts, studying the language and literary structures, aware that these stories were intended for the spiritual formation of the Hebrew nation.  Timeless, they reveal much about family systems relevant for every age.     

We have argued that Canaan is a symbol of Eden. Be this as it may, Jacob never found paradise in Canaan. Rather, it was a place of darkness for him and for his family. We find that we cannot even entertain the idea that Jacob, linked to God as he was through promise, was all that good or godly of a man. In fact, we are hard pressed to find anyone in his family that strikes us as “spiritual.” What we find are individuals laboring under their own darkness and illusions.

We begin with the birth of twins, Jacob and Esau, whose pre-natal warfare made the womb, otherwise the safest place in the human cycle of life, a battlefield (25:19-34). Jacob fails in his desperate attempt to beat his brother to the door, but, possessed with an offensive stubbornness of character, grasps his brother’s heal on the way out, thus earning for himself the unattractive name ya`aqob meaning “insidious one,” or “he takes by the heel,” which may have carried the English connotation, “a heel.” As for Esau, there is something freakish about his début reminiscent of tabloid magazines; a hairy infant with an unusual red, or earth-toned color. His outward appearance paralleled his earthy character. He preferred hunting and the outdoors, and to his parents’ distress, Canaanite women (26:34f.). Jacob was a predator of a different sort. He is styled as urbane and cunning, possessing insight into the weaknesses of others so as to gain advantage. He understands his brother’s sensual appetite and concocts a “red” stew that conformed to his brother’s physique and temperament. True to his character, Esau grunted, “Let me jaw down some red stuff, this red stuff here,” selling his first-born status to Jacob for a pot of stew. Later, Jacob steals his blind father’s blessing from him (Chapter 27). This episode likewise centers on appetite. Isaac is reduced to a mere omnivorous biped in his old age, granting his blessings on the basis of his craving for wild game. He is not the grand old patriarch we would expect, blind in more ways than one. Esau had much more in common with his father than one would think.

Esau symbolizes sensual man and the animal urge for immediacy, but overall comes off as a decent guy. He is a “man’s man,” the kind one could “kick back” and enjoy watching a football game with. In the end we see his good nature come out when he forgives his brother for his crimes, a thing not common in a land where enemies are enemies forever, and curses are hurled through generations. He even made an attempt to smooth things over with his parents by marrying a “good girl” of Abraham’s stock, albeit through Ishmael the outcast (28:9). The fact that Isaac preferred him to Jacob may well have had something to do with the fact that he was the more likable of the two, apart from the old man’s appetite.

Esau’s great illusion was that he thought that he could ignore spiritual matters. When we compare this failure with Jacob’s vices, a man who simply operates with no integrity, who would stab his own brother in his back, moving about with no morals, manipulating by deceit, pestering and grabbing from birth, and anxious to get to the top whatever it takes, we are tempted to treat Esau’s lack of interest in spirituality as a slight oversight. After all, if someone is basically a “good guy,” what’s the problem if he doesn’t take interest in spiritual things? When we consider, however, that from this “oversight” came the nation of Edom, the fountainhead of a race that would forever be hostile to God’s people throughout its history, we find that there is no such thing as a “slight” illusion. Illusions are dangerous in whatever form.

Personally, I find it a hard matter to choose between the two. If pressed, I think I like Esau better. The more important question is; on what basis does God choose Jacob over Esau? The text makes it clear that there is little in Jacob that makes him attractive at all. True, he possesses a desire for the birthright that links him to Abraham and Isaac, and for the blessing that would link him to creation, but achieves these by cunning and deceit. But all this speculation ultimately falls to the ground; It was all settled, as far as the text is concerned, in the womb before birth.

Admittedly, my assessment of this text breaks with the early Church tradition where the Fathers, by and large, regard Jacob as good and virtuous from the get-go, and Esau as evil (so Augustine, Caesarius of Arles).  Origen does something clever by observing that we all, like Rebekah,  have two “peoples” inside of us, one, the oldest and bigger, is vice, the younger and smaller virtue.  By the power of the Holy Spirit and growth in the fruits of the Spirit, the younger will prevail. Be this as it may, as I see it, Jacob does become virtuous, but only after a lifetime of struggle.   

Takeaway:  There is no clear reason from the text why God chose Jacob over Esau; it was all settled in the womb before they were born, contrary to cultural custom, where the firstborn usually is given preference. 

Questions: There is nothing attractive about either personality, but Jacob displays his rather aggressive, and perhaps we may say, obnoxious, character before birth.  Our choices often reflect something about us; what does this say about God ad his choices?   What do you think about divine predestination? 

Resource use:  Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture