A Blessing Taken Through Deception

“Dim” is kahah, the word used in Deuteronomy 34:7 to say that Moses’ eye was not dim at a hundred and twenty. Esau answers his father with hinneni, “here am I”, the word Abraham gave God and Isaac on the mountain in chapter 22.

“I know not the day of my death” is a formula for an old man setting his affairs in order, and it proves premature: Isaac lives to a hundred and eighty (35:28). By the reckoning of Rashi and the rabbis he was about a hundred and twenty-three here, which would give him fifty-seven more years.

“Quiver” is teli, a word found nowhere else in the Old Testament; some take it as a hanging sheath for arrows. “Take me some venison” is literally “hunt me a hunt”, tsud tsayid, verb and noun from the same root, the phrase that made Esau who he was in 25:27.

“Savoury meat” is matammim, tasty dishes, and the word comes six times in this chapter, from a root meaning taste. “My soul” is nephesh, my whole self: the blessing is to come from all that Isaac is, after a meal, and it is meant to be the last thing he does.

“Rebekah heard” is a participle in Hebrew, she was listening, as Sarah listened at the tent door when the son was promised (18:10). The verse sends Esau out of the tent and out of the account for twenty-five verses.

Rebekah calls Esau “thy brother”, which is exactly the relationship the plan is about to use against him. She tells Jacob first what she heard, then what to do: the report is the ground of the command.

She quotes Isaac, but not exactly. He did not say “before the LORD”; she adds it, and what was a father’s meal and blessing becomes a blessing in God’s presence. She also leaves out “such as I love”, because she will supply that herself.

“Obey my voice” is shema be-qoli, the phrase God used in 22:18 for Abraham obeying his voice. Rebekah says it three times in this chapter, in verses 8, 13 and 43, and each time the instruction is harder.

Two kids is more meat than one old man needs, and the skins will be needed too, though she does not say so yet. “Such as he loveth” shows she knows his taste better than the hunter does. Well-seasoned young goat could pass for the gazelle or wild goat of the hunt.

The plan ends in the same words as Isaac’s request to Esau, “before his death”, with the pronoun changed. Her own added words, “before the LORD”, have already dropped out again. Every step in her sentence is an order: bring, eat, bless.

“Hairy” is sair, a sound close to Seir, Esau’s future country. “Smooth” is chalaq, which also means slippery or flattering: Proverbs 5:3 speaks of a mouth “smoother than oil”, and Psalm 12:2 of “flattering lips”, the same word. Jacob describes himself better than he knows.

“A deceiver” is metaatea, one who mocks or makes sport of someone, a rare word used of those who “mocked the messengers of God” in 2 Chronicles 36:16. Jacob fears being made to look like a mocker of his father, which is what he would in fact be.

Rebekah takes the curse on herself in one sentence. After she sends Jacob away she disappears from Genesis; her death is never recorded, only her burial in the list of 49:31, while the death of her nurse gets its own verse (35:8).

Three verbs and no words: he went, he fetched, he brought. Jacob’s protest has been answered and he does not raise it again. “Such as his father loved” is the third time the chapter mentions Isaac’s love of this food.

The goodly garments of the elder brother were kept by the mother, perhaps his best clothes for occasions. The same household will be deceived again in 37:31–33, when Jacob’s sons dip Joseph’s coat in the blood of a goat: a garment and a kid of the goats deceive their father twice.

“The smooth of his neck” uses chelqah, from the smooth, chalaq, that Jacob said he was. The coarse hair of Canaan’s black goats was used for tents, and a pillow of goat’s hair helps Michal deceive Saul’s men in David’s bed (1 Samuel 19:13).

Bread goes with the meat, as a proper meal. “Into the hand of her son Jacob”: Rebekah hands everything over at the tent door. From this point Jacob is on his own; Genesis does not take her in with him.

“Who art thou, my son?” is the question Jacob cannot answer honestly here, and it returns at Peniel, when the man he wrestles asks, “What is thy name?” (32:27). There he says “Jacob”, the truth, and the name is changed.

“I am Esau thy firstborn” is a plain lie in the Hebrew as in English. Rashi reads it by moving a pause: “I am [the one bringing your food]; Esau is thy firstborn.” It is ingenious, and it shows how much the rabbis felt the discomfort of a patriarch lying to his blind father.

“Brought it to me” is hiqrah, the verb Abraham’s servant used in prayer at the well (24:12), “send me good speed”, make it happen. Jacob borrows the language of answered prayer to cover a lie. He calls God “thy God”, the LORD of his father.

“Feel” is mush, the verb Jacob feared in verse 12. Laban will use it of Jacob’s own tent in 31:34 and 37, “Laban searched all the tent”, groping through Jacob’s goods for his stolen gods. The deceiver is searched by touch in his turn.

The line is six Hebrew words, balanced like a proverb: the voice the voice of Jacob, the hands the hands of Esau. Genesis Rabbah turned it into a saying about Jacob’s descendants, whose power lies in the voice of prayer while Esau’s lies in the hands.

“So he blessed him” comes before the blessing is spoken in verse 27. Many readers take this as a summary given early, before the scene goes back over the meal, the kiss and the words. The hands decide it: Isaac trusts touch over hearing.

The last test is the plainest question, and the answer is one Hebrew word, ani, “I”. Jacob no longer uses his brother’s name; he only says yes. It is the shortest lie in the chapter.

Isaac asked for meat. Jacob brings wine as well, unrequested, and Genesis gives it a clause of its own. The blessing Isaac promised to give “after I eat” is now due; the only thing left is to be close.

This kiss is the first of several that mark Jacob’s life: he kisses Rachel at the well (29:11), and in 33:4 it is Esau who runs and kisses him. The first is part of a deception; Esau’s is not.

The blessing opens with “See”, re’eh, spoken by a man who cannot see. It is also the first blessing in Genesis in verse. The “field” is sadeh, Esau’s element since 25:27, “a man of the field”; Isaac blesses the smell of the open country on his brother’s clothes.

In a land where no rain falls from May to October, dew is what keeps the summer crops alive, and Hosea 14:5 has God say, “I will be as the dew unto Israel.” This line names God, Elohim; Esau’s blessing in verse 39 will name no God at all.

“Be lord” is gevir, a word used only here and in verse 37 in the whole Old Testament. “Thy mother’s sons” is a poetic formula for brothers, since Rebekah has only these two. The blessing speaks of peoples and nations before it gets to the one brother.

“Scarce gone out” doubles the verb in the Hebrew: he had only just gone out, going out. The two brothers must nearly have passed each other at the tent. Esau comes in “from his hunting”, the real work, too late.

Esau’s invitation differs from Jacob’s. Jacob said “arise, I pray thee, sit and eat” (verse 19); Esau speaks formally and in the third person, “Let my father arise”. Both close with the same words: “that thy soul may bless me.”

Isaac asked Jacob, “who art thou, my son?” He asks Esau only “Who art thou?”, without “my son”. Esau answers with three titles, one after another: thy son, thy firstborn, Esau.

The Hebrew is “trembled a great trembling, exceedingly”, charadah gedolah ad meod. The same “exceedingly”, ad meod, closes Esau’s cry in the next verse, so father and son are described in matching words. “Yea, and he shall be blessed” shows Isaac will not take it back.

“A great and exceeding bitter cry” is echoed in Esther 4:1, where Mordecai cries “with a loud and a bitter cry”. The rabbis joined the two, since Haman descends from Agag and Amalek, Esau’s line, and Mordecai from Jacob’s son Benjamin: the cry comes back to Jacob’s descendants.

“Subtilty” is mirmah, deceit. The same word comes back twice in the chapters that follow: Jacob accuses Laban, “wherefore then hast thou beguiled me?” (29:25, from the same root), and his own sons answer Shechem “deceitfully”, bemirmah, in 34:13.

Birthright is bekhorah; blessing is berakhah. The two words use the same three consonants with the last two swapped, and Esau’s complaint turns on the pun. “Supplanted” is aqav, grabbing by the heel, the root of Jacob’s name, so Esau reads the name as a charge sheet.

Isaac speaks of what is already done: I have made him lord, I have given, I have sustained. The blessing is described as an act completed, not a wish that can be withdrawn. “Sustained” is samakh, to lean or support, as one leans a hand on a sacrifice.

“Hast thou but one blessing?” is Esau’s only question left. Hebrews 12:17 looks back at this verse: he “found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears”, meaning no way to change his father’s decision. “Lifted up his voice, and wept” is what Hagar did beside her dying son in 21:16.

Esau’s words reverse the order of Jacob’s, earth first and heaven second. And where Jacob’s blessing began “God give thee” (verse 28), this one names no God and gives nothing; it describes where Esau will live.

“By thy sword shalt thou live” fits Edom’s later history of raiding and war. The yoke came in David’s day (2 Samuel 8:14) and broke under Jehoram, when “Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah” (2 Kings 8:20–22). “Have the dominion” renders a rare verb, perhaps “grow restless”.

“Hated” is satam, to bear a grudge and nurse it. Joseph’s brothers fear exactly this after Jacob dies: “Joseph will peradventure hate us” (50:15), the same verb, the same waiting for a father’s death. Esau means to spare Isaac the grief of seeing it done.

Esau “said in his heart”, and yet it is reported to Rebekah; Genesis does not say how. “Doth comfort himself” is mitnachem: Esau consoles himself for the stolen blessing by planning a killing. Genesis again calls them “her elder son” and “her younger son”, as in verse 15.

“Flee” is barach, and it marks both ends of Jacob’s time away: he flees to Laban here, and he flees from Laban in 31:20–21 with the same verb. Haran is where Abraham left his father’s family; Jacob is sent back along the road the family came.

“A few days” is yamim achadim. When Jacob serves seven years for Rachel, they “seemed unto him but a few days” (29:20), the same phrase. His mother’s few days become twenty years (31:41).

“Deprived” is shakhal, to be bereaved of children, the word Jacob uses in 43:14: “If I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.” If Esau killed Jacob, the family might have to put Esau to death in turn, as Cain feared for himself; that reading of “both” is an inference.

“I am weary of my life” is qatsti be-chayyay, I loathe my life. These are Rebekah’s last recorded words, and they echo her first recorded complaint in 25:22, “why am I thus?” “Daughters of Heth” comes twice; Esau’s wives from 26:34 are the unspoken example.